NEW YORK (360Dx) – Clemson University spinout Kiyatec announced today that it has raised $3 million in a Series B2 financing round.
The Greenville, South Carolina-based firm will use the proceeds to further its ongoing clinical study, 3D-Predict, to validate its cell culture platform as a patient-specific predictor of response to cancer therapies for solid tumors. The assay analyzes a patient's live cancer cells to determine whether they respond to guideline-recommended cancer drugs.
The funding round was led by VentureSouth, and it also included LabCorp as a new investor.
According to Kiyatec, the study is a prospective, multi-institutional effort to validate the predictive accuracy of the assay and correlate response to clinical outcomes with newly diagnosed and relapsed ovarian cancer, glioblastoma, and certain rare tumors.
"This validation and confidence by our investors, coupled with the exciting progress of our clinical trials, puts us on the path toward the next phase of growth and development," Kiyatec CEO Matthew Gevaert said in a statement. "With the preclinical and clinical development strengths of LabCorp's Covance Drug Development business, and their corporate position as a world leader in clinical testing, there is great potential synergy across the many ways Kiyatec's technology can be used to improve cancer care."
Earlier this month, Kiyatec added Inova Health System and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center to its list of participating sites as part of the 3D-Predict study.