Norwest and Medtech Convergence Fund co-lead investment in molecular diagnostic company working to improve diagnostic testing for women's health screening

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Nanopath Inc., a molecular diagnostics company enabling high-quality molecular testing in minutes, announced today that it has closed $10 million in Series A funding, co-led by Norwest Venture Partners and the Medtech Convergence Fund, a SV Health Investors venture fund, with participation from Gingerbread Capital and Green D Ventures. The funding will support development and commercialization of Nanopath's biosensing platform that aims to transform how women's pelvic and gynecologic infections are diagnosed.

"Nanopath's mission is deeply rooted in improving women's health and even more broadly, health equity for all. We envision Nanopath's technology as the go-to platform for routine women's health screening, allowing for clinically actionable diagnosis within a single office visit," said Amogha Tadimety, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Nanopath. "With this funding, we're looking to build our technical team and initiate commercial and clinical partnerships to bring our technology platform to market."

Nanopath's co-founders are working to close two major gaps in the industry: the limited number of disruptive life science companies focused on women's health and the limited number of women-led life science companies. Built on a core mission to address these critical disparities, Nanopath is developing technological breakthroughs designed to empower the patient and provider.

Nanopath seeks to address disparities in care for underserved populations, starting with women's health, by introducing a novel approach to molecular diagnostic testing that harnesses advances in bioengineering and nanotechnology to accurately identify and characterize a variety of pathogens within minutes, compared to existing gold-standard diagnostics that take days to return results. The technology can simultaneously characterize multiple pathogens with one test, leading to faster, more precise diagnosis and treatment.

Nanopath's proprietary biosensing technology utilizes ultrasensitive optical detection to identify DNAs and RNAs, without the need for nucleic acid amplification. This amplification-free approach minimizes reagents, lowers costs and reduces user steps that are ubiquitous across molecular diagnostics. Nanopath's platform will require minimal training to operate, making high-complexity molecular diagnostics testing accessible at the point-of-care.

Nanopath's technology has the potential to simultaneously test for multiple pathogens, based on presenting symptoms, and reduce delivery of test results from days to just 15 minutes. The company has generated strong pilot clinical data in its two lead indications through collaborations with leading hospital systems in New England.

"What we are building has the potential to holistically improve patient care by circumventing existing complex, expensive and time-consuming workflows, while simultaneously providing more granular health information," said Alison Burklund, Ph.D., co-founder and CTO of Nanopath. "We started in the women's health space because of the deep unmet need, and our desire as founders to bring a first-in-class diagnostic platform to a population that has been consistently overlooked. That said, our technology has the potential to be valuable in any situation where DNA or RNA detection is useful, including respiratory disease diagnosis, characterization of genetic risk factors, and even biosecurity surveillance and environmental monitoring."

"The women's health diagnostics market is ready for a solution that not only provides better and more actionable information, but also integrates with existing and emerging care delivery models," said Jeff Crowe, senior managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners. "The Nanopath platform can provide results with the same, if not better, accuracy than existing methods, within 15 minutes, and at lower cost. Nanopath is well positioned to improve diagnosis and care delivery across a range of healthcare settings."

"Nanopath has hit on a new approach that is poised to disrupt the existing molecular testing paradigm. We look forward to working with this team to advance their technology," said Aaron Sandoski, founding partner at SV Health Investors' Medtech Convergence Fund.

Both Crowe and Sandoski have joined Nanopath's board in tandem with this funding round. In late July, the company was named winner of the 2022 AACC Disruptive Technology Award, which recognizes innovative testing technology solutions that improve patient care through diagnostic performance or access to high-quality testing. Nanopath was also a winner of the inaugural 2021 Ignite Golden Ticket, which honors companies that advance life sciences innovation by making the biotechnology industry more inclusive and equitable by directly supporting promising entrepreneurs.

Nanopath is actively growing its purpose-driven team. To learn more about open positions, please visit www.nanopathdx.com/opportunities.

Nanopath is dedicated to improving health equity worldwide, starting with women's health. Nanopath's proprietary molecular diagnostic test takes a radically new approach to how clinicians measure and characterize human health. Through its novel biosensing technology, the company has the potential to enable fast, high-complexity tests to be performed in minutes and at the point-of-care, rather than in centralized laboratories. Nanopath's founders seek to improve the lives of women and other underserved populations, while simultaneously enhancing the lives of the Nanopath team members through purpose-driven work that helps to develop and deploy its products. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., at LabCentral, the premier launchpad for high-potential life sciences and biotech start-ups. Nanopath was spun out of Dartmouth College in 2019 in partnership with Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. For more information, visit www.nanopathdx.com.

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SOURCE Nanopath