InnoSIGN co-founders, Sigi Neerken and Paul Van de Wiel | Image credit: InnoSIGN
Eindhoven, The Netherlands-based InnoSIGN, a manufacturer of precision medicine for diagnostic and drug development applications, announced that it raised $8M (approximately €7.33M) in its Series A round of funding.
The investment came from Casdin Capital, Life Science Angels, Thuja Capital, and Brabant Development Agency.
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Capital utilisation
InnoSIGN says that the funds will help the company spin-out from Royal Philips to form a standalone company centred upon the OncoSIGNal pathway activity profiling technology.
Philips will own a minority stake in the new company. Henk van Houten, CTO and Head of Research at Philips, says, “InnoSIGN, as a stand-alone company, will be able to accelerate the development of OncoSIGNal tests which have the potential to make oncology diagnostics more efficient and precise, leading to better health outcomes.”
Paul van de Wiel, CEO and co-founder of InnoSIGN, adds, “This funding round will enable us to demonstrate the added value of OncoSIGNal compared to standard technologies for the better understanding of cell behaviour, which is highly relevant to physicians when selecting the optimal personalised therapy for cancer patients.”
InnoSIGN also says that the funds will help implement the company’s growth plans by leveraging the first-mover advantage to complete further clinical validation studies and launch in the US market. The company says it will maintain its R&D facility located at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
About InnoSIGN
Founded in 2022 by Sigi Neerken and Paul Van de Wiel, InnoSIGN commercialises its proprietary mRNA-based OncoSIGNal pathway activity profiling technology, to revolutionise precision medicine by obtaining more insight into the mechanisms of disease.
OncoSIGNal was developed by scientists at Philips Research as a breakthrough technology for quantifying cell signalling pathway activity. The software normalises and translates mRNA levels transcribed from a suite of selected genes into activity scores of the relevant signal transduction pathways.
The tests can predict how patients will respond to targeted drugs and is currently available for research-use-only, enabling research labs to run the test on conventional PCR machines in combination with the OncoSIGNal cloud-based data analysis software.
Currently, InnoSIGN utilises its database with over 100,000 pathway activity profiles for drug development and diagnostics to predict patient response to targeted therapies.
Allan May, chair of Life Science Angels and investor, says, “As the limitations of DNA sequencing and protein analysis have become clear during the last years, we believe InnoSIGN’s proprietary mRNA-based signalling pathway tests, database with pathway activity profiles, and advanced analytics software will drive the next breakthroughs in precision medicine, initially in oncology, and then in other autoimmune and infectious disease.”
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