NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Population Genetics today announced the closing of a Series B financing round that brought in $5.7 million.
The funds will be used to complete validation of the company's technology, "setting the stage for a future major financing aimed at making that technology broadly available," the UK-based firm said in a statement.
Syngenta Ventures, the VC arm of Syngenta, was a new investor in the round, and joined existing investors Compass Genetics Investors, the Wellcome Trust, Auriga Partners, and Beringea.
Population Genetics also said that it is collaborating with Syngenta to validate Population Genetics' technology in plant breeding studies.
The technology exploits the capabilities of next-generation sequencing to investigate genes that may be associated with diseases in "hundreds, if not thousands of genomes" simultaneously, the company said. The method is "expected to facilitate greatly both the identification and statistical validation of sequence variants associated with phenotypic traits, be they disease pre-dispositions or drug responses in medicine, or … important agronomic plant traits."
The company raised $3.2 million in a Series A round in 2009. Earlier this year, Population Genetics and Quintiles announced they were partnering on an effort to incorporate genomic testing into mainstream drug development.