Exosome Diagnostics, a US developer of fluid-based molecular diagnostics, has raised $27m in a series B funding round co-led by strategic investor Qiagen and life sciences private equity investor, Arcus Ventures.
Other investors in this round included new backers Tiger Partner, CD Ventures, Monashee Capital, b-to-v Partners and return investors NGN Capital and Forbion Capital Partners. The company has raised a reported $47m to date.
Proceeds will be used to advance development of Exosmome’s proprietary platform technology and commercial programmes for non-invasive, fluid-based molecular diagnostics in oncology, neurodegenerative diseases and other clinical areas.
Funding will also be allocated to the company’s launch of the first clinical diagnostic product in the US, planned for 2014. EXO106 is a diagnostic test using a non-invasive urine sample, which could potentially reduce the number of unnecessary prostate biopsies in patients with an elevated prostate-specific antigen.
Steven Soignet, general partner of Arcus Ventures, said: “Exosome Diagnostic’s technology will advance cancer care by allowing the collection of longitudinal molecular information that can potentially improve the use of cancer therapeutics and may serve as a method to diagnose and assess for recurrence of disease.”
The funding follows the announcement in January that Exosome Diagnostics and Qiagen were expanding an existing collaboration to develop non-invasive biofluid diagnostics for lung cancer. Specifically, the collaboration is focusing on detecting known cancer biomarkers in blood plasma. Blood-based diagnostics have the potential to provide repeated, non-invasive assessment of tumour mutation status.
In 2010, Exosome raised $20m in a series A round of funding from NGN Capital and Forbion Capital Partners.