Diagnoplex closes CHF10M round

Investment round

Diagnoplex, a company developing of molecular cancer diagnostics, announced the closing of a first funding of CHF10 million ($8.3 million) in a round led by Novartis Venture Fund and NeoMed, with Initiative Capital Romandie acting as co-investor.

The Novartis Venture Fund was also a seed investor in the Swiss company. Anja König, Managing Director of Novartis Venture Fund, and Thomas Goebel, Principal at NeoMed, will join Diagnoplex’s board of directors.

Diagnoplex is develop blood biomarker cancer diagnostics using its single-channel quantitative multiplex reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction technology, which makes it possible to quantify up to 60 genes simultaneously. The platform brings together the accuracy and reliability of polymerase chain reaction with the possibility to read the multi-gene signatures of different cancers. In contrast to microarray platforms, the system is easily scalable and can be run in most standard testing laboratories.

Stavros Therianos, founder and chief executive officer of Diagnoplex, developed the platform whilst at Rochester University, New York.

Diagnoplex will use the proceeds from the financing to support the further clinical development of its lead product Colox, a non-invasive test for the early detection of colon cancer, which will be made available as a ready-to-use clinical laboratory kit.

Early results obtained in a sample of 140 patients have shown Colox can detect even the pre-cancerous stage of adenoma. Early detection and intervention by colonoscopy can have an important impact on the epidemiology of colon cancer and it is estimated that survival rates improve to 90 per cent when colorectal cancer is detected early.

“Since compliance with guidelines for screening with colonoscopy is poor, too many cases are detected too late. The need for non-invasive screening is tremendous,” said Anja König.

“With the rise of personalised medicine, this is one of the healthcare areas with vast market potential that is currently underserved,” said Thomas Goebel.

"We are excited to welcome a high quality group of investors and look forward to working with this outstanding syndicate to bring powerful new cancer screening approaches to bear on the early detection of cancer,” said Stavros Therianos, chief executive officer and founder of Diagnoplex.