NEW YORK – Genetic testing software startup Nalagenetics said Friday that it has closed a Series A funding round worth $12.6 million. Intudo Ventures and Vulcan Capital led the round, with participation from the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), Dexa International, Integra Partners, and Indonesia-based Diagnos Laboratories.
With the investment, Nalagenetics is looking to expand into Malaysia and other, unspecified Southeast Asian countries this year. The firm, which currently operates in Singapore and Indonesia, also plans to hire more bioinformatics professionals, software engineers, and geneticists.
Nalagenetics spun out of the Genome Institute of Singapore's Innovation Fellow program in 2016 and later raised a $1 million seed round.
The company's flagship product, called Clinical Decision Support, is a standalone portal for laboratories to analyze sequencing and genotyping data, particularly for pharmacogenomics. The portal features modules to help clinicians understand which patients should get genetic testing, to convert raw sequencing data into machine-readable CSV files, to produce reports with actionable recommendations, to summarize results for clinicians and researchers, and to integrate the data into healthcare systems.
The firm also has developed a series of clinical modules for pharmacogenomics, nutrigenomics, and breast cancer risk prediction, and is working on several based on polygenic risk scores.
Nalagenetics also provides wet-lab protocols, bioinformatics algorithms, recommendations to clinicians, and application programming interfaces to connect its software to laboratory information systems. The firm recently opened its own lab in Singapore.
"We are excited to continue advocating the development of cost-effective genetic screening for personalization of prescription and screening, especially for cardiovascular [disease], neurodegenerative [disease], and cancers as the biggest killers in Southeast Asia," Nalagenetics Cofounder and CEO Levana Sani said in a statement.
"Local populations require local solutions in addressing genetics-related issues. Indonesia, and more broadly Southeast Asia, have long been underserved markets for genetic testing," added Intudo Ventures Founding Partner Patrick Yip. "With solutions custom-tailored to local contexts, Nalagenetics is integrating targeted products and services into local healthcare systems to offer genetic testing services and analytics for patients that would otherwise not have access to such services."