NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – PathoGenetix today announced it has raised $7.5 million in a second closing of a Series B financing round, bringing the total raised in the round to $11.5 million.
Funds will be used to further develop its Genome Sequence Scanning technology and then to commercialize it, the Woburn, Mass.-based firm said. Investors in the second closing include new participant Ascension Health Ventures through its second fund, CHV II, as well as existing investors including Excel Venture Management, CB Health Ventures, and HealthCare Ventures.
During the summer, the company formerly called US Genomics raised $4 million in the first close of the Series B round.
The GSS technology, developed with more than $50 million from the US Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, "extracts genomic barcodes from microbial DNA as it flows through a microfluidic chip at 150 million base pairs per second," PathoGenetix said in a statement. It added that complex clinical specimens can be scanned to identify thousands of pathogenic strains in less time and with lower costs than with current technologies.
Applications for the technology include microbiome research, clinical diagnostics, antibiotic development, detection of bacterial contamination, and others, it said.
"The funds will allow us to complete development and begin commercializing GSS in the rapidly emerging research market for analysis of microbial populations," John Canepa, CEO of PathoGenetix, said, adding that the addition of Ascension Health Ventures as an investor will allow the company access to more than 200 acute care hospitals within the venture firm's limited partner base.