A Bay Area startup that wants to more accurately predict some preterm births, and thus improve health outcomes for both mothers and babies, has raised $60 million to develop their technology.
On Tuesday, Mirvie announced the Series B round led by Decheng Capital and including BlackRock, Foresite Capital, General Catalyst, GV, Khosla Ventures and Mayfield. And a portion of the round — $15 million — also came from a debt facility financed by Comerica Bank.
The South San Francisco company is developing a platform to test and analyze RNA samples from pregnant people in order to detect markers from an array of complications that can occur during pregnancy.
Mirvie's goal is to catch potential health conditions in the second trimester, much earlier than the typical third trimester only after many symptoms appear.
"We realized there was a staggering unmet need in this field," co-founder and CEO Maneesh Jain told me. "There were many systemic issues in women's health but at a scientific level we don't understand the biology" behind many conditions that arise during pregnancy, but knowing who's at risk can lead to better interventions.
So Jain and co-founder Stephen Quake, who chairs the company's scientific advisory board, started Mirvie in 2018 to develop a platform focused on assessing maternal risk factors for pregnancy-related conditions.
One of those conditions is preeclampsia, or a form of hypertension during pregnancy that can lead to more serious issues like seizures or preterm births.
Twenty percent of pregnancies in the U.S. develop complications and most go undiagnosed because clinical assessments are generally limited to things like medical history, race, ethnicity and body mass index, the company says.
Mirvie is developing a platform to analyze and predict all pregnancy-related conditions, and it has also developed a blood test specifically to diagnose preeclampsia.
The test received the FDA's Breakthrough Device designation earlier this year, Jain told me, and it's already being used in clinical trials.
Jain and Quake have co-authored a couple of studies this year that were published in the journals Nature and American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which demonstrated that Mirvie's blood test is able to successfully predict preeclampsia risk more accurately than conventional clinical assessments.
The company also has a clinical trial that has been underway for about a year to assess and validate the test.
Jain wants to continue to hire people for the clinical trial, as well as for data and go-to-market positions, and wants to get the company's headcount up to 50 people this year. It currently employs 35 people plus around a dozen contractors.
Over the next few years, Mirvie will also be focused on researching the underlying pathways that lead to more serious health conditions during pregnancy as it builds out its RNA platform.
