NEW YORK – Dxcover said Wednesday that it has raised £9.7 million ($11.9 million) in a combined Series A and grant financing. The funding will support the development of the firm's liquid biopsy platform for the detection of early-stage cancers, including brain and colorectal malignancies.
The Series A portion of the financing brought in £7.5 million, led by existing investors Eos Advisory, Mercia Asset Management, Scottish Enterprise, University of Strathclyde, Social Investment Scotland Ventures, and Norcliffe Capital, as well as Boston-based life science investor Mark Bamforth of Thairm Bio. The Glasgow, Scotland-based firm has also received a grant of more than £2.2 million from the European Innovation Council, which it announced last December.
"Having demonstrated our multi-cancer capability, we can now focus on building the pipeline of organ-specific tests, beginning with a multicenter study for CE-IVDR marking of the Dxcover Brain Cancer test. We will also expand our data on colorectal cancer, one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and continue our work on collaborative projects," Dxcover CEO Mark Hegarty said in a statement.
Dxcover’s liquid biopsy platform utilizes infrared spectroscopy to analyze patient blood samples and artificial intelligence algorithms to detect the presence or absence of disease. The company said it has proven the technology, initially, in the detection of brain cancer, and has since expanded its focus to eight cancers as of 2022.
Dxcover was formed in 2019, based on work by Matthew Baker, the company's chief technical officer. Baker said in a statement that the firm's platform is based on multiomic analyses and is complementary to other existing technologies.