NEW YORK – Early is Good (EIG), an Indianapolis-based diagnostics developer focused on renal disease, has closed a $4 million seed funding round from Silicon Valley investment firm Social Capital.
The company will use the funds to complete clinical trials for its first product, BCDx, a laboratory-developed test for early bladder cancer detection. The BCDx test uses nanotechnology to quantify a panel of biomarkers found in urine to diagnose bladder cancer and the stage of the disease.
EIG said that its test evaluates a range of biomarkers including proteins, microRNAs, mRNAs, and long noncoding RNAs. The noninvasive technology does not require extraction or amplification and uses a hybrid dual readout method to quantify the biomarkers, the company said.
An analytical validation study of BCDx demonstrated attomolar sensitivity and specificity, with high positive and negative predictive values for biomarkers that are present in picomolar concentrations, EIG added.
"Despite being one of the most common cancers in the US, we still rely on old techniques to diagnose bladder cancer," EIG Founder and CEO Thakshila Liyanage said in a statement. "Our technology can distinguish healthy versus oncogenic phenotypes earlier and more specifically than a cystoscopy, while also having the benefit of being noninvasive and less reliant on inconvenient procedures and subjective analysis."