NEW YORK — Prolocor, a developer of precision diagnostics for cardiovascular disorders, said on Tuesday that it has closed a $3.2 million seed financing round and received a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The financing round was led by Green Park & Golf Ventures and included Laboratory Corporation of America and unnamed angel investors.
The Phase II grant money will be used to fund the validation of an assay for a thrombotic event risk biomarker called FcγRIIa. According to the grant's abstract, the biomarker is expressed on the surface of platelets and is involved in platelet activation. In a preliminary study of 197 patients, expression of FcγRIIa was associated with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.
In addition to determining the assay's ability to measure platelet FcγRIIa accurately, precisely, and reproducibly, the Philadelphia-based company plans to perform clinical validation in prospective observational studies in acute coronary syndrome, stroke, and cancer, the abstract adds.
"The combined funding from the seed round and the NIH SBIR grant will allow us to make significant progress toward validating FcγRIIa as a precision tool for patients with cardiovascular disease," Prolocor Cofounder and CEO Peter DiBattiste said in a statement. "With this funding in hand, the company plans to establish a CLIA-certified laboratory and complete an ongoing prospective, observational multicenter non-interventional cohort study in 800 patients who have experienced heart attacks."