Seattle-based biotech Monod Bio is moving offices after raising $25 million in seed funding.
Monod Bio, which announced the seed round on Monday, currently works out of CoMotion at the University of Washington, where the company was incubated. Co-founder and CEO Daniel-Adriano Silva said Monod Bio is moving to a new, 12,000-square-foot space in South Lake Union by the end of the year.
"It has lab, engineering and space for offices," Silva said.
Monod Bio currently has 16 employees, Silva said, all of whom are based in the Seattle area due to the hands-on nature of scientific work. He added that the company plans to roughly double its headcount over the next year.
Monod Bio was founded in 2021. The company makes biosensors that give off light when they recognize a target, such as biomarkers, toxins and viruses. In its release, the company said it has made biosensors that recognize the spike protein on the Covid-19 virus, cancer receptors and a molecule released by the body after a heart attack.
Matrix Capital led the seed round, while the Global Health Investment Corp., Cercano Management, the Washington Research Foundation, Boom Capital Ventures, Sahsen Ventures and Pack Ventures all participated. The Washington Research Foundation recently led the $10 million funding round for SEngine Precision Medicine, a Seattle-based biotech moving to Bothell this fall that is developing ways to test the effectiveness of cancer treatments outside of patients' bodies on live tumor cells derived from patients.
“Monod is using synthetic biology to draw on the architecture of living organisms to attain high detection sensitivity and accuracy at scale, due to low costs with biosensors compared to conventional laboratory testing,” Karan Takhar, managing partner at Matrix Capital, said in a release.
