NEW YORK – Akadeum Life Sciences said on Tuesday that it has closed a $17.5 million round of Series B financing led by Arboretum Ventures.
The funding will mainly help advance the global commercialization of Akadeum's proprietary microbubble-based separation platform for isolating rare cells such as circulating tumor cells from liquid biopsies or other molecules for diverse analyses.
Akadeum will also devote some funding to develop new business-to-business partnerships and to expand the company's research and development and new product development capabilities.
The microbubble separation method uses low-density, glass-shelled, and air-filled bubbles with antibody-coated surfaces to isolate cellular targets and float them to the top of a sample. The technique gets around certain volume and throughput restrictions inherent in many other platforms and could potentially replace centrifugation steps in other cell analysis procedures.
"This funding brings new momentum to our effort to deploy our technology platform to empower new scientific discoveries, improve diagnostic sensitivity, and increase access to novel cell therapies," Brandon McNaughton, Akadeum's president and CEO, said in a statement. "The success of this financing is another indication of the growing interest in the applications of the Akadeum platform technology," he added.
Other investors in the Series B round included Beringea, Agilent Technologies, Lifespan Ventures, BlueStone Venture Partners, Berkeley Catalyst Fund, Michigan Capital Network, Michigan Rise, and the University of Michigan.
Akadeum further announced the appointment of Dan Kidle, managing partner at Arboretum Ventures, to the Akadeum board of directors.