As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020 and med-tech companies stepped up with numerous diagnostic and telehealth solutions, the availability of funding sources began to soar. The med-tech industry has raised a total of $46.9 billion so far in 2021 through 636 financings.
Glyconics Ltd. landed £1.5 million (US$2 million) in an Enterprise Investment Scheme funding round to finance a clinical trial of its diabetes screening tool, Glyconics-SX. The Cambridge, U.K.-based diagnostics company is developing a point-of-care, hand-held device using miniaturized infrared (IR) spectrometry. The technology scans fingernails, assessing glycation to identify diabetes within minutes.
Assure Tech (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd. made its debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange Star Market and raised ¥1.2 billion (US$188 million) in the IPO. Its shares increased 19.28% in the middle of the first trading day but closed 6.73% lower the second day.
Sense Biodetection Ltd. closed a $65 million series B investment round on a high note with an additional $15 million pouring in from previous investors. The Abingdon, England-based company raised $50 million in a first tranche of the round in April. Koch Disruptive Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Koch Industries Inc., led both parts of the round.
Generate Biomedicines Inc., a company building a machine learning platform to discover new protein therapies, raised $370 million in series B financing supported by its founder, Flagship Pioneering, and institutional co-investors. Its team plans to have multiple preclinical programs by year-end with several moving to the clinic in 2023.
Protego Biopharma Inc. raised $51 million in a series A financing to advance the targeting of protein misfolding diseases. The fundraising is a few years on from 2017, when the idea underscoring the company’s birth was to build a platform based on small molecules that could stabilize proteins and restore their functionality.
Avilar Therapeutics Inc. emerged from stealth with a $60 million seed round and plans to apply a targeted protein degradation technology to a large swath of extracellular proteins associated with disease.
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