NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – ThermaGenix has completed a $1.5 million series A-1 financing round.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm, which brands itself "the PCR Improvement Company," said it will use some of the funds to support commercial activities related to its ThermaStop and ThermaGo products — PCR additive reagents that improve polymerase fidelity and product purity.
The company will also use the new funding to broaden the range of assay utility for two other technologies — its LATE-PCR and Lights-On/Lights-Off application suite — which were recently described in a scientific publication for use in a method called virtual barcoding. LATE-PCR entails non-symmetric amplification of single-stranded DNA, while Lights-On/Lights-Off are low-temperature consensus probes.
ThermaGenix noted in a statement that its scientific team has been researching and improving PCR, RT-PCR, and multiplex PCR amplification of DNA and RNA for two decades. ThermaStop and ThermaGo are designed to eliminate mispriming before, during, and after PCR and RT-PCR amplification, increasing assay quality, quantitative accuracy, sensitivity, and multiplexing, the firm said.
The company licensed the underlying technology for the reagents from Brandeis University last month. At that time, it noted plans to use additional methods and reagents licensed from Brandeis to construct molecular assays for species identification and diagnostic tests for cancer-related mutations in blood plasma.