One BioMed Secures $5M Series A Funding to Advance Fully Automated Point-of-Care Diagnostic Platform

On July 10, 2019, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that medical diagnostics company One BioMed announced the completion of a $5 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Singapore-based Biopath Ventures and U.S. early-stage fund ARCH Venture Partners, with participation from Singapore’s SEEDS Capital.

The proceeds from this round of financing will be used to commercialize the company’s first product, an automated sample preparation device designed to purify and isolate nucleic acids from various samples—a critical initial step in many molecular biology and clinical diagnostic techniques.

One BioMed, established in 2015, is a medical diagnostics company headquartered in Singapore. One BioMed possesses cutting-edge digital health and molecular diagnostics (MDx) platform technologies, poised to revolutionize point-of-care (PoC) testing for the precise and early detection of infectious diseases.

One BioMed’s technology can simultaneously detect bacterial and viral infection panels in a fully automated manner within 30 minutes, at a cost comparable to that of a single molecular diagnostic (MDx) test performed in a central laboratory. This enables physicians to accurately diagnose a range of diseases based on symptoms, eliminating the need for guesswork.

BioMed stated that the company’s sample preparation equipment serves as the foundation for building a next-generation platform, which will integrate molecular diagnostic tools, including its proprietary silicon biophotonic sensing technology, to create a next-generation platform for point-of-care testing of infectious diseases.

“We are delighted that these investors are supporting our initiative, which aims to transform the healthcare landscape through biomimetic technology,” said Dr. Mi Kyoung Park, CEO and Founder of One BioMed, in a statement.

“Without Singapore’s thriving tech ecosystem, the joint laboratory established by the Genome Institute of Singapore and the Institute of Microelectronics, and the strong support from Enterprise Singapore, we would not have been able to reach the product development stage,” added Dr. Mi Kyoung Park.

Dr. Joseph Jeong and Dr. Nick Roelofs, Founding Partners of BioPath Ventures, stated in a joint release, “One BioMed is the first company in the healthcare sector that our fund has invested in. For 30 years, ARCH has supported scientific research around the world, and we are delighted to extend our investment network to the Singapore region.”

“Dr. Jeong and Dr. Roelofs will join the Company’s Board of Directors, collectively bringing to One BioMed extensive end-to-end leadership experience spanning technology, sales, marketing, investment, finance, business management, and corporate governance,” said Dr. Park.

Dr. Jeong has invested extensively across deep-tech industries, including biotechnology, semiconductors, advanced displays, energy, and advanced materials. He founded Biopath Ventures, served as Investment Director of the venture capital team at Applied Materials, and worked at ARCH Venture Partners.

Roelofs has held leadership positions at life sciences companies such as Bio-Rad and Applied Biosystems, and served as Chief Operating Officer of the Life Sciences Group, where he led Agilent’s transformation from a test and measurement company into the mature life sciences enterprise it is today.

BioPath Ventures, established in 2018, is a MAS-licensed venture capital fund based in Singapore. The fund focuses on next-generation technologies and talent development, with offices in Cambridge, UK, and Silicon Valley. BioPath Ventures invests in transformative life science tools, diagnostic reagents, and products across the Pacific Rim to reduce costs and improve accessibility.

ARCH Venture Partners, founded in 1986 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, USA, maintains offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, and Ireland. ARCH has invested in more than 300 companies, driven by its mission to support disruptive early-stage science. Notable life sciences companies that ARCH helped create include Illumina, Grail, Twist Bioscience, Quanterix, Juno, and Alnylam. To date, ARCH has raised ten venture capital funds, with total assets under management exceeding $3 billion.

(Compiled by Cheng Tao)