NEW YORK – Molecular food safety testing company Clear Labs announced on Wednesday that it has raised $60 million in an oversubscribed Series C financing round to advance its genomic surveillance products for SARS-CoV-2.
The round was co-led by Counterpoint Global and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from existing investors including Redmile Group, Menlo Ventures, Wing Ventures, HBM Genomics, Khosla Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and Dafgard.
The funding will be used to help increase the availability of the company's solutions to help labs and clinicians "more easily identify and trace all strains of pathogens, like SARS-CoV-2," Clear Labs said in a statement.
The company will continue to develop its capabilities so it "can deliver the early warning system, enhanced real-time genomic surveillance of the pathogen(s) and in-depth variant tracking that the public and private health communities need," Clear Labs CEO Sasan Amini said in a statement.
The San Carlos, California-based company's Clear Dx Whole Genome Sequencing workflow solution determines the complete RNA sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 genome in 24 hours and can differentiate viral strains and monitor mutations that can lead to variants.
Clear Labs also received Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration in September for its Clear Dx SARS-CoV-2 nanopore sequencing test that allows labs to perform diagnostic screening and genomic surveillance simultaneously.
Last May, the firm raised $18 million in a strategic funding round to commercialize its SARS-CoV-2 platform.