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Rebus Biosystems Closes $20M Series B Financing Round

NEW YORK – Rebus Biosystems, most recently known as Optical Biosystems, announced Thursday it has closed a $20 million Series B financing round, led by Illumina Ventures.

Lifecore Partners, Ncore Ventures, Xolon Invest, CTK Investments, Ray, Seegene Medical Foundation, LabGenomics, and Timefolio Asset Management joined the round.

"The ability of [Rebus Biosystems'] technology to increase throughput, without compromising biological fidelity, will offer spatial analysis to researchers throughout the scientific community," Illuminva Ventures Partners Tom Willis said in a statement.

The Santa Clara, California-based firm's technology includes the patented synthetic aperture optics (SAO) system, which can detect labeled gene transcripts with high-resolution imaging. Founded in 2006 by current CTO Josh Ryu and others, the firm has also been called Solametrix and LightSpeed Genomics. In previous incarnations, the firm has attempted to apply the technology to next-generation sequencing and gene expression analysis.

Rebus Biosystems said it plans to launch its instrument and assay kits for spatial transcriptomics in early 2021.

Illumina Ventures has also participated in funding rounds this year for Stilla Technologies, Genome Medical, and DNA Script.

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