A University of Bristol spin-out firm has raised £415,000 to develop technology which it says could be used to help detect life-threatening diseases at an early stage.
Rosa Biotech said it would use money from its seed funding round to accelerate testing of its platform, called Pandra, which acts as a biosensor on patient blood samples.
The company, founded in 2014 and spun out of the university in 2019, said it was initially targeting the early identification of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFL) which, the business said, if left untreated can develop into steatohepatitis (NASH), leading to liver failure.
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Rosa Biotech said it had secured its latest investment from a group of “experienced technology and life sciences entrepreneurs”, adding that it would act as a bridge to its Series A funding round planned for later this year, as it targets full commercialisation of its NAFLD/NASH offering.
Chief executive Dr Mark Street-Docherty said: “The prevalence of NAFLD is increasing at an alarming rate, placing an ever-growing burden on specialist healthcare resources. With over 100 therapeutic interventions in clinical development, it’s critical that healthcare providers can cost effectively screen for early signs of this condition, enabling treatment and lifestyle changes to occur early enough to prevent permanent liver damage and failure.
“With Series A funding expected to follow later in the year, this is an incredibly exciting time for our business. Pandra technology is moving ever closer to commercialization, and will enable Rosa Biotech to save lives and help protect vital healthcare infrastructure.”
Jon Craton, chairman of Rosa Biotech, added: ”Despite the huge advances in medicine in recent decades, there remains a significant number of life-affecting diseases that remain hard to diagnose at scale. This is hampering the rollout of screening programs that could profoundly impact quality of life and life expectancy for millions of people in the Western world and in developing economies.
“Rosa’s mission is to address this challenge for a wide range of chronic and serious diseases - the combination of our innovative platform-based technology with sophisticated AI will allow us to make that vision a reality.”
Rosa Biotech operates a dedicated laboratory at the Science Creates incubator in St Philips, which is home to more than 20 deep tech companies, and a hub of academic researchers, startup and spin-out companies and investors.
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