NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Horizon Technology Finance said this week that it closed a $3 million loan to preconception genetic testing firm GenePeeks.
GenePeeks has offices in New York City and Cambridge, Mass., and focuses on identifying inherited disease risk in future generations. According to Horizon, the firm uses algorithms to simulate the genetic interactions between two potential parents that occur in reproduction, digitally crating and analyzing thousands of hypothetical genomes to discover disease risk that cannot be uncovered by existing pre-pregnancy screening tools.
GenePeeks' initial focus is on the sperm donor industry. In late May, the company launched its sperm donor screening service called Matchright with two partner sperm banks, as Clinical Sequencing News reported at the time. The service combines sequence data from potential sperm donors with sequence data from a female customer to create virtual gametes and then hundreds of thousands of virtual progeny, each with their own virtual genotype. Based on whether any of the genotypes could confer a disease phenotype, donors are ruled in or out, creating a low-risk catalogue for customers of the service.
In late 2012, GenePeeks raised $3 million in a Series A financing round.
"The growth capital with attractive terms provided by Horizon helps to unlock our potential for impact at a very important stage for the company," GenePeeks CEO Anne Morriss said in a statement.