Tuesday, March 15, 2016
HealthTell, Inc. announced today the successful close of their Series B financing. Since their incorporation in 2012, HealthTell has been laying the groundwork for a series of next-generation diagnostic tests. The Series B funding will allow the company to begin commercializing panels of tests for autoimmune diseases, such as lupus. These diseases mimic many other conditions, can take years to diagnose, and are difficult to treat. HealthTell believes their platform is ideally suited for tackling these complex diseases, and providing rheumatologists with a whole new level of information on patient health and disease progression.
In parallel, HealthTell has developed a fast growing pharmaceutical services business that will ultimately culminate in high value companion diagnostic tests for new and existing drugs. Bill Colston, PhD, CEO, is optimistic about HealthTell's impact in the drug development process, "Our pharmaceutical customers continue to reinforce the need for new tools to stratify patients for drug development trials and to select patients most likely to respond to specific treatments."
The Series B financing was led by Third Point Ventures. "We're very proud of the HealthTell team. They executed flawlessly on a very daunting set of commercialization challenges. We're also excited to welcome Jason Hong, PhD as a new Board Member, and the Third Point team as partners in building a valuable and impactful business," announced Paul Conley, PhD, Managing Director, Paladin Capital Group, who led the Series A round.
HealthTell has raised $40 million to date; following $14 million raised during Series A financing. The early focus of the company was to create a stable, reproducible manufacturing facility in Chandler, AZ, currently producing nearly 100,000 tests a year. HealthTell has also established numerous relationships with key centers of excellence, academic institutions, and hospitals throughout the country.
The science behind HealthTell's platform originated from the Arizona State University Biodesign Institute, and has been well vetted in scientific peer-reviewed literature. Rather than targeting the disease itself, the HealthTell test profiles the immune system of a patient and looks for patterns that correspond to the patient's health, all from a single drop of blood. Like genetic sequencing, the test is a discovery platform that can be used for many different applications, but it has the added benefits of being simple to run, inexpensive, and easy to interpret.
Source : finance.yahoo.com
