NEW YORK – CBC Group's R-Bridge Healthcare Fund said Monday that it has signed an agreement with Singapore-based Mirxes, providing the company with $40 million in financing to advance its microRNA-based testing platform.
Mirxes is a developer of blood-based miRNA tests for the early detection of cancer and other diseases. Its GastroClear assay is the first IVD to obtain regulatory approval in Singapore for gastric cancer screening, according to the firm. The test has demonstrated about 87 percent sensitivity for stage I cancers and 75 percent sensitivity for lesions under 1 cm in size.
The company also said it recently completed a prospective clinical trial in China demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of GastroClear in a 9,472-person cohort.
It is also developing diagnostic tests for lung, liver, and colorectal cancer, with a focus on high-growth Asia-Pacific markets including Southeast Asia, China, and Japan.
R-Bridge said that its $40 million synthetic royalty-backed financing has a flexible and customized repayment schedule to meet Mirxes' near-term strategic priorities.
The agreement with R-Bridge "is timely and critical to drive Mirxes' commercial expansion in Asia-Pacific markets and to accelerate our clinical pipeline development," Mirxes Cofounder and CEO Zhou Lihan said in a statement.