NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Tissue-based cancer diagnostics shop BioMarker Strategies has raised $1.1 million of a targeted $4 million round, a company executive confirmed.
In an e-mail to GenomeWeb Daily News, BioMarker Strategies President Scott Allocco said that funds from the round will be used to support the first clinical use of its flagship platform, called SnapPath, in patients with advanced melanoma.
He did not identify the investors in the round but said that prior rounds, which raised $6.5 million, included "high net worth investors." In its history, the company has also received $2.5 million in non-dilutive Small Business Innovation Research funding from the National Cancer Institute, Allocco said.
BioMarker Strategies disclosed the financing round in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission last week.
SnapPath is an automated live tumor cell processing platform for BioMarker Strategies' algorithm-based tests, called Functional Signaling Profiles, which guide targeted drug therapy for individual cancer patients, according to the Baltimore, Md.-based company's website. The system, it added, "enables the ex vivo induction" of biomarkers, such as phosphoproteins "to show how a patient's live tumor cells respond to pathway stimulants (such as growth factors) and inhibitors."
SnapPath is agnostic to all analytical technologies and standard laboratory testing methods and can be used for RNA, DNA, and protein analysis, according to the firm.