Biocartis secures €30m from PMV et al.

The investor consortium also includes RMM, Valiance, Philips, the Wellcome Trust, Petercam, several family offices (including that of Biocartis's founder, Rudi Pauwels) and a number of small shareholders including company employees.

The funding raised in the series-E was committed solely by existing shareholders of Biocartis.

PMV invested via its Transformation Innovation and Acceleration (TINA) fund, which is managed by PMV but is a joint venture with the Flemish government. The TINA fund holds €200m in risk capital, according to PMV's website.

Biocartis will use the fresh capital to further develop its molecular diagnostics platform IdyllaTM for its first trial. The company will also continue to work on other oncology-based trials.

The company claims the funding will also allow it to roll out its commercialisation plan in 2014.

Previous funding
Biocartis's series-A round took place in October 2009. Advent Venture Partners, Biovest, KBC Private Equity and Aescap Venture provided €10m to the company.

The following April, Biovest, Advent and Aescap committed a further €30m alongside JJDC and Debiopharm in the company's series-B.

PMV then invested in the company in November 2011 as part of a €71m series-C round, according to unquote" data. The capital injection was provided by a large consortium comprising PMV, Debiopharm, Philips, Valiance, Biovest, Wellcome Trust, New Rhein Healthcare, several family offices and members of Biocartis's senior management team.

The company's series-D round took place last December, with PMV providing €11m of the €34.5m funding round for Biocartis. The majority of the company's previous backers reinvested in the round.

Company
Founded in 2007, Biocartis is headquartered in Lausanne with an additional office in Mechelen in the Flanders region of Belgium. The company employs 150 staff.

Biocartis develops diagnostics systems with the aim of providing point-of-need personalised diagnostics tests that do not need to be outsourced or conducted in a specialist laboratory, thus speeding up the process of diagnosis and therefore accelerating commencement of therapy decision-making and ultimately treatment. The company's diagnostics platforms are designed predominantly for molecular oncology applications.

Biocartis's IdyllaTM platform, which the company plans on launching in the second half of 2014, is a molecular diagnostics platform that allows trials to be performed without the need for specialist laboratory space and technicians. The platform is designed to detect biomarkers in cancer samples.

The company launched its Multiplex Biomarker Analysis Platform in December last year, transitioning it from a late-stage development company to a commercial business.

People
Rudi Pauwels is the founder of Biocartis. The company's board of directors includes Aescap co-founder Dinko Valerio; Roald Borré, the business and fund manager of the TINA fund at PMV; and Advent general partner Raj Parekh.

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