Inflammatix Secures $32 Million Series C Financing to Advance Commercial Launch of HostDx Molecular Diagnostic Platform

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned from foreign media that on January 10, 2020, Inflammatix, a company specializing in molecular diagnostics of the immune system, announced the completion of its $32 million Series C financing round. Investors in this round included Khosla Ventures, Northpond Ventures, Think.Health Ventures, and Gray Sky Venture Partners.

Inflammatix plans to use the proceeds from this funding round to advance the commercial launch of its HostDx™ test in the European market, with plans to submit it for FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval in 2021.

Inflammatix, founded in 2016 and headquartered in California, USA, is a company developing molecular diagnostic technologies for acute infections and sepsis. Initially, the company focused on developing diagnostic technologies for acute bacterial and viral infections and sepsis. As its business has expanded, Inflammatix is building upon its initial focus by establishing a host-response-based diagnostic pipeline, which includes detection technologies for tropical infections, autoimmune diseases, transplant rejection, and other conditions. Currently, this host-response-based diagnostic approach has achieved notable progress.

HostDx™ testing is Inflammatix’s flagship product. It accounts for clinical heterogeneity by leveraging multiple cohorts that vary in population, sample type, assay platform, and other factors, thereby identifying reproducible signals amidst the “noise” across multiple datasets to ensure diagnostic accuracy. The company states that this diagnostic approach is applicable to acute infection and sepsis in a variety of settings, including emergency department visits, identification of infections in trauma patients, and monitoring of neonatal and intensive care unit (ICU) patients.

Antibiotic resistance and sepsis cause 700,000 and 5 million deaths worldwide each year, respectively. Traditional methods for diagnosing acute infections are too slow and often inaccurate because most infections do not enter the bloodstream; however, since these methods only search for pathogens in the blood, patients with suspected infections are frequently treated with antibiotics empirically, thereby contributing to antibiotic resistance and sepsis.

Inflammatix’s HostDx test employs proprietary machine learning algorithms that integrate the expression of multiple immune genes (host response) to identify the presence of bacterial or viral infections and determine whether a patient has sepsis or is at risk of developing it. The HostDx system offers a streamlined workflow from sample collection to result, delivering outcomes in 30 minutes or less. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that the HostDx™ test achieves a negative predictive value for bacterial infections exceeding 95%.

Dr. Mike Rubin, Founder and CEO of Northpond Ventures, stated: “The Inflammatix team is leveraging knowledge of the immune system and immune responses to improve the diagnosis of acute infections and sepsis. We believe their innovations in data science expertise and rapid multiplex testing systems have the potential to transform the current healthcare landscape.”

“Dr. Tim Sweeney, Co-founder and CEO of Inflammatix, said, ‘We are thrilled to have the support of this strong group of healthcare investors. With this funding, we look forward to bringing the HostDx test into hospitals and clinics, enabling physicians to promptly provide patients with appropriate treatments.’”

Previously, Inflammatix completed its Series A financing on March 17, 2017, and its Series B financing on October 18, 2018, with the specific amounts undisclosed. The company’s first round of financing was completed on January 20, 2017, funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), with an amount of $99.99 million; the financing round designation was not disclosed.

Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. In addition to investing in traditional venture sectors such as the internet, computing, mobile, and silicon technologies, the firm also focuses on clean technology.

Northpond Ventures is a science-driven venture capital firm headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. The firm’s investment activities are primarily focused on life sciences, medical technology, and healthcare-related industries.

Think.Health Ventures is a healthcare venture capital firm headquartered in Bavaria, Germany. The company primarily invests in digital health, medical technology, and healthcare services.

Gray Sky Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm dedicated to the life sciences and healthcare sectors, headquartered in Washington, D.C., USA.

(Compiled by Yang Xiaohui)