Stanford-StartX Fund-backed Inflammatix received series C funding led by Grey Sky ahead of the European release of its acute infection diagnostics platform.
Inflammatix, a US-based acute infection testing kit developer backed by Stanford-StartX Fund, obtained $32m of series C funding on Friday led by early-stage investment fund Grey Sky Venture Partners.
Venture capital firms Khosla Ventures and Northpond Ventures backed the round together with investment fund Think.Health Ventures. Stanford-StartX Fund is the venture fund allied with Stanford University’s StartX accelerator.
Founded in 2016, Inflammatix is working on medical diagnostic tools that apply machine learning algorithms to search the patient’s immune genes for biomarkers that allude to the presence of an acute infection.
The technology, dubbed HostDx, aims to classify acute infections as bacterial or viral in less than 30 minutes in order to help prescribe effective drugs and reduce the prevalence of antibacterial resistance.
HostDx flags up serious pathogens before they wind up in the patient’s bloodstream and also helps diagnose sepsis, caused when the body misjudges its infection response and prompts changes that can damage organ systems.
The cash will help advance HostDx towards commercial release in Europe ahead of a planned regulatory submission to US regulator Food and Drug Administration that is currently scheduled for 2021.
Inflammatix had raised total funding of less than $10m as of late-2017 from Stanford-StartX Fund, Khosla Ventures and US Department of Defense-run technology development board Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
Northpond Ventures and Think.Health Ventures both also participated in the series C round as existing investors.
