University of Washington spinout TwinStrand has now raised a total of $8.4m in equity and debt to develop its DNA sequencing technology.

TwinStrand Biosciences, a US-based DNA sequencing technology spinout from University of Washington, has obtained $1.2m of a targeted $4m financing round from undisclosed investors, according to a regulatory filing.

Founded in 2015, TwinStrand Biosciences is developing a DNA sequencing platform branded Duplex Sequencing which is designed to pick up rare genetic features that go undetected by existing technologies.

Duplex Sequencing uses a priming material called DupSeq to uniquely tag and group information from each of the DNA duplex’s two strands, enabling a comparison between sequencing reads and molecules derived from each strand.

TwinStrand is currently targeting medical and diagnostic applications, such as precision medicine, for its technology, though the same approach could also serve non-medical industries such as forensic science.

The spinout’s board of directors includes Lawrence Loeb, a professor of pathology in Washington’s Molecular Medicine and Mechanisms of Disease unit whose research covers cancer, genetic disease and genomics.

TwinStrand previously obtained $5.3m in equity from undisclosed investors in September 2017, after securing $1.9m in debt, options and securities from unnamed backers the previous year.