Myconostica completes £5.4M round as university fund UMIP makes first investment

Funding round completed

Manchester University spin-out Myconostica Ltd, a specialist in rapid and specific tests for life-threatening fungal infections, completed the third close of a £5.4 million round with a £1 million investment from the UMIP Premier Fund. UMIP was set up in April 2008 to invest in spin-outs from the university.

In this, UMIP’s first investment, it joins existing investors, Nexus Medical Partners, Boston, US; Innoven Partenaires, Paris; Medicis Ventures, Munich; and the lead investor from the first round, Amphion Innovations.

One Myconostica test detects the two most common causes of fungal pneumonia, which account for over 95 per cent of cases, in less than 4 hours. Fungal pneumonia is the leading cause of infectious death in leukaemia and is the most common first manifestation of AIDS.

The money will support the launch of Myconostica’s first two products, a real-time molecular diagnostic simultaneously testing for both Aspergillus and Pneumocystis, and  a fungal DNA extraction system. The clinical studies supporting European marketing approval were presented at the infectious disease conference ECCMID in Barcelona in April of this year.

The investment will also allow development and launch of further diagnostic tests targeting other critical fungal infections, such as the fungi causing sepsis and bloodstream infections. Myconostica will be applying to the FDA for regulatory approval to launch the products in the US market.

David Holbrook, who leads the healthcare practice of MTI, the manager of the UMIP fund, joined the Myconostica board. Commenting on the investment he said, “We are delighted to be making the UMIP’s first investment in Myconostica. This is an exemplar of the type of high quality market-focused spin out company for which the University of Manchester is rightly renowned”. 

Jerel Whittingham, Chief Executive Officer of Myconostica said, “We have succeeded in attracting leading international investors in the sector who know we can only succeed commercially by making a real difference medically. At such a difficult time in financial markets, Myconostica’s success in this oversubscribed fund-raising is a tremendous endorsement of both our rapid progress to date and of our commercial prospects.”