BennuBio has assumed control of an existing UNM licence for cytometer technology, securing commitments from three investors to target a commercial release by next year.
BennuBio, a US-based cell processing technology spinout of University of New Mexico (UNM), has obtained $1.5m in funding from Tramway Venture Partners, Cottonwood Technology Fund and Sun Mountain Capital.
The deal was arranged through state government-backed fund-of-funds New Mexico Catalyst Fund, which is managed by Sun Mountain Capital and has supplied capital to both Tramway and Cottonwood.
BennuBio expects to add another $500,000 from either the round’s existing subscribers or new investors over coming weeks, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
The company was formed to take over the assets of UNM spinout Eta Diagnostics, which had been developing flow-through cytometers used by researchers to process cells for purposes including medical diagnostics or drug discovery.
BennuBio’s approach uses sound waves rather than fluids to push tissue samples through the system in parallel, allowing it to process specimen at rates ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 cells per second depending on complexity.
Eta started commercialising the cytometers in 2013 to advance the work of Steven Graves and Andrew Shreve, assistant professor and director respectively at the UNM Center for Biomedical Engineering.
However, Graves, now CEO of BennuBio, decided to pursue a new company and management for the technology when it became clear Eta Diagnostics was struggling to raise sufficient capital.
BennuBio hopes the seed funding will help it launch the flow cytometers within a year as it prepares to design a modular system for applying the approach in biomedical research, drug screening and diagnostics settings.
Waneta Tuttle, fund manager at Tramway Venture Partners, has joined the BennuBio board of directors, alongside David Blivin, managing director of Cottonwood Technology Fund, and Sally Corning, partner at Sun Mountain Capital.
Eta Diagnostics had closed a $300,000 seed round in 2014 led by an unspecified angel investor, allocating the funds towards building a commercial prototype of the cytometer technology.