NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Biotech firm Biodesy said today that it has closed a $15 million Series A financing round with investments from 5AM Ventures, Pfizer Venture Investments, and Roche Venture Fund.
Additionally, the company announced that it has named Greg Yap as CEO and a director. Biodesy founder Joshua Salafsky has been appointed as chief science officer and a director.
Biodesy plans to use the new funds to further develop and commercialize its second-harmonic generation (SHG) technology, which, the company said, can identify and characterize protein structural changes with sub-angstrom resolution in real time and with high throughput.
By offering the ability to closely track changes in protein structure and function, the technology could prove useful in applications including drug discovery, structural biology, and discovery and development of clinical biomarkers.
"Biodesy has the potential to help transform our understanding of how proteins work by delivering the first real-time, high-throughput system for measuring changes in protein structure caused by molecular interactions," Andrew Schwab, managing partner of 5AM Ventures and a Biodesy director, said in a statement.
Yap joins the company after a stint as GE's first healthcare entrepreneur in residence. Previously he held an executive position at Ventana Medical Systems, overseeing that company's cancer assay portfolio. Prior to that post he was chief operating officer at CELLective Dx and held multiple management roles at Affymetrix, including vice president of DNA Products and vice president of molecular diagnostics.
In a statement, Yap said the financing would allow Biodesy to "rapidly launch a full suite of products and systems" based on the SHG technology. He added that the company has begun to "demonstrate the value of our technology through revenue-bearing collaborations" including the recent signing of its first pharmaceutical partnership.