NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Indian personalized medicine startup Mitra Biotech announced today that it has raised $27.4 million through a Series B financing round.
Participants in the financing included new investors Sequoia India and Sands Capital Ventures, which co-led the round, and RA Capital Management. Also participating were existing investors Accel and Tata Capital Innovations Fund. In conjunction with the Series B round, Sequoia and Sands will become members of Mitra's board.
Mitra said it would use the proceeds of the financing to expand the availability of CANScript, a platform designed to predict patient responses to cancer treatments. CANScript involves creating an ex vivo tumor ecosystem that closely reflects the unique heterogeneity and architecture of a patient's tumor as it exists inside the body; testing different factors indicating tumor response; and entering the findings of these assays into a machine learning algorithm to calculate a score that predicts the likelihood the patient will respond to a specific treatment strategy.
"These new funds will allow us to enhance our technology and engage in new studies to further demonstrate CANScript's clinical utility," Mitra President, CEO, and Co-founder Mallikarjun Sundaram said in a statement. "We will also move forward with our commercial efforts in the United States, as well as emerging and other key markets."