NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – QuantuMDx announced today that it has closed a $12 million funding round. The UK-based life science tools and diagnostics company has also appointed three new board members.
The firm said it will use the new funding to further develop its low-cost, portable, point-of-care molecular diagnostics system, called Q-POC. The technology uses electrical fields to capture pathogens in samples prior to rapid microfluidics-based multiplex PCR. QuantuMDx will also use the funding to continue field studies for an assay portfolio that includes warfarin, human papilloma virus, and tuberculosis testing, as well as to bring in new executives with industry experience.
The company received an undisclosed amount of funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop the pathogen-concentrating technology and molecular diagnostics platform for tuberculosis testing in March 2016.
The firm further announced the appointments of Nigel Williams, Riccardo Braglia, and Timothy Chia as board members. "The appointments of Nigel, Riccardo, and Timothy to our board reflects a major turning point for the company as we recruit an experienced team to prepare the company for commercialization," QuantuMDx Chairman John Burn said in a statement. "This and the fact that our funding round was oversubscribed is testament to investor confidence that QuantuMDx's Q-POC device is demonstrating considerable promise that it can crack the sensitivity, multiplexing, and [cost of goods] issues that have dogged the point of care IVD industry to date."
In addition to Q-POC, the company is also developing other molecular diagnostic platforms that can be used as standalone devices or integrated into MDx workflows, including a pathogen enrichment system called CAPTURE-XT and a rapid sample preparation kit called DNA-XT.