Swedish biotech firm Denator said this week it has completed its sixth financing round, securing €2.75 million ($3.66 million) in funding.
According to a statement by Denator CEO Olof Skold, the funds will be used to continue market expansion and development of the firm's heat-stabilization technology, which uses rapid heating as opposed to conventional snap-freezing to halt enzyme activity in biological samples, thus preserving them for analysis.
Effective sample collection and preservation has emerged as a key challenge in proteomics, particularly with regard to analyses of protein phosphorylation, which is a highly labile post-translational modification.
Although phosphorylation is a prime area of interest within proteomics — particularly in the pharmaceutical and clinical arenas where researchers are studying phosphoproteins in hopes of developing and better targeting kinase inhibitors for the treatment of a variety of diseases — the lack of a good method for preserving tissue samples intended for phosphoproteomic research has been a significant impediment to this work.
Existing investors and new investors Novo Seeds – the early stage investment group of Novo A/S – and venture capital firm Almi Invest participated in the funding round.
In conjunction with the financing, Soren Moller, managing investment director at Novo Seeds, joined Denator's board of directors.