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Scipher Medicine Nabs $110M in Financing

NEW YORK – Scipher Medicine said Thursday that it has completed a $110 million financing led by Cowen Healthcare Investments, with participation from new investors Neuberger Berman, Hitachi Ventures, Laurion Capital, and Monashee Investment Management.

Existing investors taking part included Northpond Ventures, aMoon, Khosla Ventures, Optum Ventures, Echo Health Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. The new funds bring Scipher's total financing to $227 million to date.

Scipher is advancing a menu of precision medicine diagnostics aimed at guiding therapy for immune-mediated diseases — beginning with PrismRA, an assay for predicting therapy response in rheumatoid arthritis now available clinically as a laboratory-developed test.

The firm's approach relies on the elucidation and analysis of RNA signatures to identify individuals with different disease and treatment-response subtypes.

Scipher said that concurrent with the financing, Tim Anderson, partner and head of research at Cowen Healthcare Investments is joining its board of directors.

“Precision medicine has transformed oncology in ways we could only imagine a decade ago. The next frontier to tackle is autoimmune diseases where very few if any solutions exist today," Anderson said.

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