NEW YORK – German bioinformatics startup Nostos Genomics said last week that it has closed a seed funding round worth €5 million ($5.7 million).
Investment firms 42CAP, Frontline Ventures, Amino Collective, and Entrepreneur First led the round. Also participating were Acequia Capital and individual investors Konstantin Mehl of Kaia Health, Robert Fenton of Qualio, and Mark Evans of Kindred Capital.
Berlin-based Nostos said it will use the funding to expand into new European markets as well as the US. The firm also expects to grow its development team and initiate several unspecified studies. It is currently conducting a large-scale validation study with data from Genomics England.
The company offers a technology platform called Aion that aims to improve the interpretation of genetic variants found in clinical sequencing tests with the help of artificial intelligence. Nostos claims that Aion can identify variants responsible for more than 10,000 diseases and that the automated analysis process, which has been CE-marked, reduces time to diagnosis from 12 hours to just two minutes.
"Our platform dramatically cuts the cost of genetic testing while also improving diagnostic accuracy. With this seed round we will be able to quickly expand our team, enter a series of new markets including the US, and conduct more studies to further develop our platform," Nostos Cofounder and CTO Rocío Acuña Hidalgo said in a statement.
"Rare genetic diseases remain incredibly difficult to diagnose, and we have seen that Nostos Genomics' technology can empower clinicians by providing them with faster, earlier, and more accurate diagnoses for such diseases," added Will Prendergast, a partner at Frontline Ventures. "In a part of healthcare where so many patients struggle to find answers, we believe that the ability to interpret and analyze genetic variants quickly will not only improve patient outcomes but also their general wellbeing.