A life sciences startup with ties to UNC-Chapel Hill has completed a $15 million series A financing round to accelerate the development of a platform intended to advance precision medicine.
The company, Codetta Biosciences, began operations in November based on technology that was developed by and licensed from UNC professor Michael Ramsey. In addition to covering startup costs, Codetta is using this capital to advance the technology into a commercial platform that can be used by researchers and physicians.
This includes bringing on new employees. In just the six months since launching, the company has grown to a team of 15 between its two spaces in the Triangle — an administrative office in Morrisville and a research and development center in Durham — and some virtual employees. By the end of this year, CEO TJ Johnson said, the company will reach 20 employees, with another wave of planned for 2023.
Anzu Partners, which has multiple offices in the U.S., led the financing round, which also included participation from Genoa Ventures and VC23.
Prior to joining Codetta, Johnson served as the CEO of Arizona-based HTG Molecular (Nasdaq: HTGM) for 11 years. He stepped down in 2019 and spent some time semi-retired. He was attracted to joining Codetta because of the potential of the technology and its role in the emerging ecosystem of precision medicine, Johnson said.
"The company's ability to make a difference in how we're able to provide the tools necessary to provide precision medicine to all patients was what enticed me to join Codetta," Johnson said.
In precision medicine, patients undergo various genomic tests to determine a treatment target. Generally, this is done through multiple platforms that look at DNA, RNA and protein biomarkers separately. That information is then synthesized and woven together. Codetta's platform is different in that it's being developed for these biomarkers to be analyzed simultaneously. The company is aiming to develop a platform that's more efficient and generates higher-quality data than what's currently available.
"We think this provides the best and most in-depth picture for the patient," Johnson said.
Johnson said the company is aiming to develop the technology into a platform that's a small, bench-top instrument that's affordable and easy to use. This differs from the options generally available, which are expensive and complex, and therefore limits the settings in which they are available. These wouldn't be issues for large research centers and hospitals, but they become limiting factors for more community settings in which most people receive medical care.
The company isn't publicly disclosing its development timeline yet, but Johnson said these platforms can generally be a 18- to 24-month process. The financing raised should support the duration of the development, with another raise likely needed as the company gets closer to commercialization.
When the company reaches commercialization, it'll first launch the platform as a research tool before advancing it as a clinical platform. This allows the company to validate the platform through researchers in academic centers and pharma and biotech groups who publish papers based on results from the platform. Additionally, the regulatory pathway for research use is shorter and less expensive.
After being validated by researchers, and securing regulatory approval, the company expects to advance the platform into diagnostic labs around the world, where it will run patients samples and provide information to physicians on how to best treat their patients.
"Researchers can use this to understand the broader picture on diseases," Johnson said. "As it moves into patient care, we'll be able to more easily test patient samples and get a broader, fuller picture of what's going on with their disease."
