NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Purigen Biosystems said today that it has raised $18.2 million in a Series A financing round, and plans to use the funds to further develop and commercialize its technology for automated preparation of genomic and genetic testing samples.
The round was led by 5AM Ventures and Roche Venture Fund, the company said, with participation from existing investors the Stanford-Startx Fund and Western Investments Capital.
"Purigen's technology accommodates multiple sample types including new applications that are difficult or impossible to address in today's genomics testing," said Co-founder and CEO Klint Rose in a statement. "Our proprietary isotachophoresis technology enables purification and quantitation of nucleic acid with dramatically increased yields and improved purity from a wide variety of samples including liquid biopsies, fresh or formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues, buccal swabs, and cultured or sorted cells."
The company aims to start placing commercial systems in research and clinical labs in the first half of 2017.
Under the terms of the financing, 5AM Ventures Managing Director Andy Schwab, Roche Venture Fund Investment Director Tracy Saxton, HealthTell CEO Bill Colston, and former DVS Sciences CEO Joe Victor will join Purigen's board. Victor will be named executive chairman.
Purigen Co-founder and Stanford professor Juan Santiago — who invented the isotachophoresis technology the company's platform is based on — will continue on as the company's scientific advisor as well as the chairman of its scientific advisory board. CEO Rose and CTO Amy Hiddessen will also serve on the board.
Purigen, which was founded in 2012, received a $150,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research funding from the National Institutes of Health in January 2014 to develop its technology.
At the time, Hiddessen told GenomeWeb that Purigen hoped to eventually partner with a larger company so that its device could be used as the "front-end sample prep" for a diagnostic tool. She further added that the technology could be "integrated into powerful analyses platforms for which there is already a market, but for which current solutions suffer from lack of highly sensitive, highly unbiased sample prep."