NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Bioinformatics firm Cartagenia said today that it has raised €4.3million ($5.9 million) from investors in a private round of financing.
Participants in the round included existing shareholders Capricorn ICT Arkiv, a Leuven-based ICT fund; the Flemish investment company PMV; and Gemma Frisius Fund, the venture fund of the University of Leuven. Management of the firm also participated in the financing.
Cartagenia said that it will use the funds to further commercialize its Cartagenia Bench platform in key markets including North America and Europe. Some of the money will also go towards developing informatics products specifically for the oncology and reproductive health markets focusing on tools for areas such as pre-natal testing, cancer screening, and diagnostic genetic testing for oncology applications, according to Herman Verrelst, Cartagenia's CEO.
In a separate announcement today, Agilent said that it has signed a distribution agreement with Cartagenia that allows it to resell Cartagenia's Bench Lab CNV module, the company's software for analyzing and reporting copy number variants, to small and medium-sized cytogenetic laboratories globally.
Jacob Thaysen, Agilent's VP and general manager of the Diagnostics and Genomics Group, noted in a statement that Agilent is the first worldwide reseller of the Bench Lab CNV. "Labs with minimal software budget and resources can now afford to implement proven, standardized processes to analyze, interpret, and report their CGH data and generate precise draft lab reports with minimal disruption to their analysis workflow and staff," said Thaysen.