NEW YORK – Kiyatec on Tuesday announced it has raised $18 million in a Series C funding round, which it will put toward advancing its functional precision oncology platform, 3D-Predict.
The Series C funding round was led by new investor Bruker and existing investors Seae Ventures, VentureSouth, and LabCorp.
Kiyatec's functional precision oncology platform involves using laboratory models of patients' live cancer cells to measure individual responses to various cancer drugs. The firm has a version of its platform, 3D-Predict Glioma, that is commercially available in all but three US states as a tool to predict high-grade glioma patients' responses to cancer drugs they've not yet received. The test is not available in California, New York, or Rhode Island.
According to the Clemson University spinout, clinical validation studies have demonstrated that newly diagnosed glioma patients whom the platform identified as "responders" to standard-of-care therapy lived six months longer on that therapy than patients considered non-responders according to the platform. The firm is also developing versions of its test for ovarian, breast, non-small cell lung, and rare cancers.
Kiyatec also offers its test as a preclinical tool for drug developers so they can better evaluate human drug responses before advancing their agents into the clinic.
In October, Kiyatec partnered with the neurosurgical medical device firm NICO to help improve tissue quality, in turn improving the platform's predictive abilities.