Nanopath — A diagnostics company that it says is “founded by women, for women” — recently closure $10 million in Series A funding.
This round of financing was Northwest Venture Partners and SV Health Investorparticipate Gingerbread Capital and Green D Ventures.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup is creating a point-of-care diagnostics platform for women’s health checks. It will use the funds raised to support the development and commercialization of the platform, which is designed to diagnose pelvic and gynecological infections in women, including viruses and bacteria.
Amogha Tadimety and Alison Burklund, who met during their Ph.D. studies at Dartmouth College, founded Nanopath in 2019. Early in their research, they identified women’s health as the healthcare sector with the largest life sciences market opportunity.
“The number of life sciences companies working on women’s health is very limited, and as a result, many critical health decisions are made in the dark,” Tadimety said. “Through our doctoral research, we identified a clear need for more informative diagnosis at the point of care, which led to our discovery of Nanopath.”
Nanopath’s biosensing technology is designed to perform genetic testing of pelvic and gynecological health in minutes.The startup’s platform does not require Nucleic Acid Amplification Technology (NAAT), which is ubiquitous in molecular testing technology. According to Tadimety, this means that clinically actionable genetic information can be obtained in 15-20 minutes, compared with up to two hours for standard PCR tests.
“Imagine having a test and being treated for a pelvic or gynecological infection in just a few minutes in your doctor’s office — that’s what we’re going to solve,” she said.
In clinical trials for two indications conducted by two New England Health Systems, Nanopath generated experimental data demonstrating the ability of its platform to perform genotyping and bacterial identification. Its platform currently only identifies human papillomavirus and urinary tract infections, but the company plans to expand to more conditions.
Nanopath’s immediate focus for the next few years will be on building teams, advancing product development, conducting more According to Tadimety, clinical research and seeking supplier partnerships. While Nanopath “is initially focused on addressing a significant unmet need in women’s health,” she said, the company could address other diagnostic markets in the future, such as serious infections, liquid biopsies, and even the design of panels for personalized diagnostic tests.
Tadimety acknowledged that the startup is still developing its business model and business strategy, saying that Nanopath is still in the research and development stage.
For her, the company’s core mission is to address health disparities by developing better technologies “to empower patients and providers in the context of infectious diseases and health disorders that are most intimate to women”. Tadimety added that Nanopath envisions itself as eventually becoming the system of choice for routine women’s health checks at the point of care.
This is a rather lofty goal, and achieving it requires Nanopath to surpass diagnostic giants such as Abbott, illumination and Explore the diagnosis. Tadimety claims Nanopath’s platform is NAAT free (unlike other molecular diagnostic platforms that use nucleic acid amplification technology) Therefore, the faster speed sets the company apart from the competition. We just have to see how eager patients and providers are for this speed of women’s health diagnosis.
Photo: Nanopath
