NEW YORK – Precision medicine company InnoSign announced on Tuesday that it has raised $8 million in a Series A financing. The proceeds will be used to finance the firm's spin off from Royal Philips to form a standalone company focused on its OncoSignal pathway activity profiling technology.
Investors in the financing round include Casdin Capital, Life Science Angels, Thuja Capital, and Brabant Development Agency. Philips owns a minority stake in the new company.
The investment enables InnoSign to leverage a first mover advantage and complete clinical validation studies prior to launch in the US market. InnoSign will be a US-based company but will maintain its research and development facility in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
The OncoSignal technology is a qPCR panel that tests for mRNA sequences associated with activity in diverse cancer-associated pathways. InnoSign's proprietary database has more than 100,000 pathway activity profiles and can be used for drug development and diagnostics to predict patient response to targeted therapies.
The firm's OncoSignal qPCR 7 pathway test is currently available for research use, according to a statement, and can be used on conventional PCR machines in combination with the OncoSignal cloud-based data analysis software.
Allan May, chair of Life Science Angels, said that limitations of DNA sequencing and protein analysis have become clear in recent years. "We believe InnoSign's proprietary mRNA-based signaling pathway tests, database with pathway activity profiles, and advanced analytics software will drive the next breakthroughs in precision medicine, initially in oncology, and then in other autoimmune and infectious disease."