NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Boreal Genomics today said that it has raised $6.9 million in a Series B round of private financing.
The Vancouver, British Columbia-based firm said that it will use the funds to accelerate commercialization of its Aurora instrument and cartridge products and to further develop biomolecule separation capabilities for the instrument. The platform is based on the firm's Synchronous Coefficient of Drag Alteration (SCODA) technology, which was initially developed at the University of British Columbia.
The Aurora platform is used for nucleic acid purification and is currently undergoing a beta trial. Boreal said that it expects to ship instruments broadly in 2011 to target markets including environmental sample processing, life science research, bio defense, and forensics. The firm also expects to broaden its product offerings to clinical research applications as it expands the throughput of the instrument.
The Series B round was led by Arch Venture Partners, Kearny Venture Partners, and GrowthWorks Capital, with participation from InQTel.
As part of the Series B financing, Arch Venture Partners Co-founder and Managing Director Keith Crandell, Kearny Venture Partners General Manager Caley Castelein, and Illumina SVP of Corporate Development Nicholas Naclerio have joined Boreal's board of directors.
"SCODA completely changes the paradigm of nucleic acid separation and purification," Castelein said in a statement. "Current technologies utilize physical binding properties of nucleic acids and inherently have a trade-off between efficiency of recovery and purification. By using the physical behavior of nucleic acids in a gel matrix, SCODA does not have this trade off and can both purify and concentrate at the same time."