NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Veracyte announced today that it has signed a deal securing up to $45 million in financing from investment fund Visium Healthcare Partners.
Under the terms of the arrangement, Visium will provide Veracyte with a loan of $25 million, approximately $5 million of which will be used to retire the molecular diagnostics company's existing loan with Silicon Valley Bank. Veracyte may borrow an additional $15 million, at its option, through June 2017.
The loan agreement has a term of six years, with quarterly payments of interest for the first four years. Veracyte may choose to defer a portion of the interest payments and pay them, along with interest accrued, with the principal in the last two years of the agreement.
Additionally, if Veracyte executes an equity offering, Visium has certain rights to participate and purchase up to $5 million of the securities.
"This agreement provides Veracyte the funding and flexibility we need to advance our business towards having three revenue-generating products by the end of 2018," Veracyte President and CEO Bonnie Anderson said in a statement.
Veracyte currently sells the Afirma Gene Expression Classifier for differentiating benign thyroid nodules from cancerous ones, and it recently launched the Percepta Bronchial Genomic Classifier for identifying patients at low risk of lung cancer following inconclusive bronchoscopy.
The company aims to introduce its third test, for the diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, sometime this year.