NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Purigen Biosystems announced today that it has completed a $26.4 million Series B financing round.
The funding round was led by Agilent Technologies, and included participation from new investor Cota Capital along with existing investors 5AM Ventures and Roche Venture Fund.
Purigen was founded in 2012 and provides technologies for extracting, enriching, and quantifying nucleic acids from biological samples. It will use the proceeds from the financing to expand its scientific and commercial operations, accelerate the launch of its core isotachophoresis (ITP) sample preparation platform, and develop new features on the platform for future applications.
The technology enables the automated extraction of DNA and RNA with significantly increased yields and improved purity from a wide range of sample types, including cultured or sorted cells, fresh or formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues, liquid biopsies, and buccal swabs, Purigen said.
As part of the investment round, Agilent Vice President and General Manager Kevin Corcoran will join Purigen's board.
"Purigen is set to transform both the quality and yield of nucleic acids obtained from valuable clinical genomics samples for analysis by next-generation sequencing," Purigen CEO Barney Saunders said in a statement. "The new investments from Agilent and Cota are validation of Purigen's opportunities in the sample preparation market. The support from our board members will be invaluable as we begin the commercial rollout of our first ITP-based products and enable scientists to maximize the actionable information that can be extracted from their precious samples."
Purigen had raised $18.2 million in a Series A round in May 2016, and received a $150,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health in January 2014 to develop its technology.