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BioFire Nabs Additional $20M Investment

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – BioFire Diagnostics today said that Athyrium Opportunities Fund increased its investment in the company to $45 million.

Athyrium invested $25 million into BioFire in September. The new financing will go toward continued commercialization of and to meet growing demand for the Salt Lake City-based company's FilmArray molecular diagnostic platform.

The first panel for the platform, FilmArray Respiratory Panel, simultaneously tests for 17 viral targets and three bacterial targets in about one hour. BioFire said is making progress in bringing additional panels to the hospital market. Last month, it submitted its 510(k) application to the US Food and Drug Administration for its sepsis panel.

"The additional capital allows BioFire to simultaneously deepen our penetration into the hospital market with our molecular diagnostic platform, progress our blood culture ID panel through the FDA 510(k) approval process, and focus on bringing additional panels to market in the coming years," BioFire CEO Kirk Ririe said in a statement. "We continue to scale our organization to meet increasing demand for both the FilmArray RP and our pipeline panels, which we believe will further enhance the utility of our platform for the medical community."

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