Swedish diagnostics firm Elypta has raised $21m in a Series A financing round for the development of a metabolism-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test.
Led by venture capital company Bonnier Ventures, the financing round also saw participation from existing investors, namely Hillclimber, Industrifonden, Norrsken VC, Chalmers Ventures, Navigare Ventures and Nina Capital.
Elypta intends to use the funds for the development and validation of blood and urine tests for MCED in asymptomatic adult patients as well as kidney cancer recurrence diagnoses.
The tests are developed using complete profiling of human glycosaminoglycans (GAGome) as biomarkers of cancer metabolism.
Elypta founder Francesco Gatto said: “Our MCED test has the potential to greatly increase the share of cancers detected at the earliest stages, when treatment could mean a cure, besides being less costly.
“Detecting stage I cancer is the key challenge here, and whereas other MCED tests based on cell-free DNA struggle to find cancer at this early stage, metabolism-based biomarkers could really make a difference.”
At present, the company has two major multicentre studies in progress, LEVANTIS-0087A for MCED and AURORAX-0087A for kidney cancer recurrence.
The LEVANTIS-0087A study for MCED plans to enrol more than 9,000 subjects.
The AURORAX-0087A study is co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
Founded in 2017, Elypta raised €6m in a late seed funding round in 2020 for the development of lab kits and software to measure and analyse a panel of metabolites biomarkers.
