NEW YORK – Epigenetics diagnostics firm VolitionRx said on Wednesday that it has received a $1.5 million loan from Belgium's Namur Invest Capital Risk.
According to the firm, the loan is unsecured, bears a 6 percent per year interest rate, and is repayable over four years, maturing on July 31, 2026.
The cash infusion will help fund an early-access program for Volition's Nu.Q nucleosome quantification technology at sites across the US, European Union, and UK.
Since 2016, Volition has received over $14 million in non-dilutive funding from agencies within Belgium's Walloon region. Last year, for example, the firm received $4 million in cash and loans from the Walloon regional government and Namur Invest.
"Thanks to this latest funding from Namur Invest, we are incredibly excited to launch our early-access program and engage industry leaders in the development and adoption of our transformative Nucleosomics technology in a range of exemplifications of our assays," Gaetan Michel, Volition's chief operating officer, said in a statement.
The Nu.Q cancer screening assay extracts circulating free nucleosomes, which are often found at elevated levels in the blood of cancer patients, via an ELISA assay targeting histone H3.1.
Although circulating nucleosomes and nucleosome modifications are known cancer biomarkers, Volition says that relatively few diagnostic tools target them.
The company has also released a veterinary version of the Nu.Q assay.