The investment round was led by the Bangarang Group, with participation from various family offices and prior investors.
To date, SEngine Precision Medicine has raised more than $9m to support the development of its high-throughput screening technology, which tests targeted anti-cancer agents against a patient's cancer cells using patient-derived 3D tumor organoids.
SEngine currently has a headcount of 17 employees and expects to double this number over the next year, said CEO Carla Grandori. This will enable the company to scale up it Paris Test and give ‘full speed attention’ to its targets for drug development.
“News of the Paris Test is spreading and driving demand,” Grandori told us. “We're responding to individual doctors who tell us that no one offers a test like ours. We're also establishing partnerships and starting to develop drugs against drug targets.”
According to the company, it is the only Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certified laboratory testing patient organoids against hundreds of drugs.
Said Grandori, “Others that may test tissue are often very manual processes or comparatively slow.” Additionally, she said few labs have been able to test many different types of cancer, while SEngine has tested 37 tumor types and added seven this year.
The company also last month announced a new joint venture with Atomwise.
SEngine’s technology will provide validated therapeutic targets and the organoid platform for testing the efficacy of lead compounds, Grandori told us at the time – and Atomwise’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology will support the discovery and development of inhibitor compounds against these targets.
