NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – HTG Molecular Diagnostics said after the close of the market on Monday that its first quarter revenues increased 24 percent year over year as product revenues rose sharply.
The firm also announced a sponsored research agreement with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center aimed at lung cancer.
The Tucson-based firm reported $1.0 million in total revenues for the three months ended March 31, up from $826,523 in the year-ago quarter. Product revenues increased to $727,438 from $370,007, while service revenues dropped to $62,292 from $214,850, and other revenues, including grant revenues, slid to $234,585 from $241,666.
The firm said that consumables revenues increased to $500,000 in Q1 2015 from $56,000 a year ago, driven by a growing installed base and the launch of the HTG EdgeSeq platform, which uses the company's proprietary nuclease protection probe chemistry to prepare samples without the need to extract DNA or RNA.
Instrument revenues, however, decreased to about $200,000 from $300,000 as the result of the sale of one less HTG Edge system in the recently completed quarter, the firm said.
HTG said it had an overall contracted installed base of 36 systems at the end of Q1 2015.
Meanwhile, the drop in service revenue resulted from the firm's strategic focus on products and move away from certain service revenue streams, the company said. It added that grant revenues are anticipated to decline further in the second quarter as its National Institutes of Health grant ended last month.
HTG said that its net loss was $4.1 million compared to a net loss of $2.8 million a year ago. Net loss attributable to common shareholders was $5.0 million, or $14.99 per share, in Q1 2015, compared to a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $3.6 million, or $37.80 per share, a year ago.
The company exited the quarter with $1.6 million in cash and cash equivalents. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, the firm went public last month, raising $45.4 million in net proceeds.
Separately, HTG announced a sponsored research agreement with MD Anderson to support the development of next-generation sequencing-based gene expression assays for lung cancer subtyping, fusion status, and immune profiling.
During the two-year span of the deal, the project will use the HTG EdgeSeq system and products to molecularly profile multiple well-characterized samples from cohorts including the Biomarker-integrated Approaches of Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer Elimination lung cancer trial.
The platform allows researchers to measure the quantitative expression of mRNA and miRNA from very small, challenging sample types, including formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues, and plasma, HTG said.
It said that it expects the project to yield information that can be used to select new therapies, as well as better predict outcomes in lung cancer patients than currently accepted genomic analysis alone.