Big deal: Quanterix detects $46m series D

If Quanterix’s latest funding round is anything to go by, David Walt, co-founder of biotechnology company Illumina – which celebrated a $103.5m initial public offering on Nasdaq in 2000 and now has a market cap of $23.9bn – is on his way to creating another healthcare giant.

Walt, the Robinson professor of chemistry at Tufts University, co-founded diagnostics platform Quanterix in 2007 and the Tufts spinout has gone from strength to strength since then.

Most recently, the company raised $46m in a series D round from investors including Tufts, following six consecutive quarters of 100% growth.

Arch Venture Partners, the VC firm spun out of Chicago University’s tech transfer office that is still backed by the institution, Arch Overage Fund, Cormorant Asset Management, Trinitas Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Hercules Capital and Walt himself also contributed funds.

The valuation, though undisclosed, is an increase over that of the previous round. Tufts Tech Transfer revealed that investors previously estimated the company to be worth at least $11bn – already nearly half Illumina’s valuation.

Quanterix is working on a diagnostic platform, Simoa, that measures individual proteins with a more than 1,000-fold sensitivity compared with current methods. The technology is expected to have a significant impact on R&D across life sciences, drug development and diagnostics.

Quanterix focuses on a range of areas – neurology, oncology, cardiology, inflammation and infectious disease – and hopes the platform may also prove pivotal for liquid biopsies, brain and heart health as well as early detection of diseases before symptoms appear.

One application of the platform is the detection of cancer. Certain proteins can indicate that a patient has the disease, but the proteins are present only in trace quantities and cannot be detected with current methods. An earlier detection of cancer could improve survival rates.

The spinout will use the latest capital to create desktop instruments, add 60 assays to its platform, strengthen its global marketing efforts and conduct further studies.

Although the series D is the spinout’s biggest round to date, the company set the stage in 2008 with a $15m series A – a sum that is a rarity for university spinouts. The series A round featured Arch Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures and Flagship Ventures.

In 2011, Quanterix raised a $6m series B round from undisclosed investors, and $18.5m in a series C the following year. The latter consisted of $15m in equity provided by biotechnology company BioMérieux, Arch Venture Partners, Bain, Flagship and In-Q-Tel, a firm investing on behalf of the US intelligence services.

The series C deal included an agreement with BioMérieux granting the company worldwide exclusive rights to Quanterix’s Simoa platform in clinical laboratories and for industrial uses.

Bihua Chen, managing member and chief executive of Cormorant Asset Management, said of the series D round: “Quanterix is transforming both research and diagnostics for brain injuries, heart disease, cancer and other diseases with its ultra-sensitive technology that helps researchers access information otherwise not reliably attainable.

“We are excited to invest in Quanterix and its mission to advance personalised medicine and ultimately help patients directly manage their diseases.”