NEW YORK – Swiss RNA analysis company Alithea Genomics said on Tuesday that it has closed a CHF 1 million (roughly $1 million) seed financing round, led by the Novalis Biotech Acceleration fund with participation of Switzerland-based private investors.
Alithea, a 2020 spinout from the Swiss Federal institute of Technology (EPFL) Lausanne, has developed a proprietary technology called Bulk RNA Barcoding and sequencing (BRB-seq), which enables the preparation of hundreds of RNA samples for sequencing in a single tube.
The funding will be used to expand the commercialization and scale-up of the company's new sequencing library preparation products, Mercurius BRB-seq and Mercurius Blood BRB-seq.
“Alithea’s BRB-seq-based products have the potential to be adopted on a massive scale and expand into new and substantial industrial sectors, such as drug screening and biobank functionalization,” said Jan Van den Berghe, cofounder and managing director of Novalis Biotech, who has also been appointed to Alithea’s board of directors.