Quanterix Secures $46 Million Series D Funding to Advance Ultra-Sensitive Biomarker Detection Platform

Recently, Quanterix, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Massachusetts, USA, announced that it has secured $46 million in Series D financing. Quanterix’s core technology is high-sensitivity single-molecule detection.

In vitro diagnostic tools to ensure users remain free from disease.

Founded in 2007, Quanterix is a typical technology startup. Its technical founder is also one of the co-founders of Illumina. The company focuses on neurology, oncology, cardiology, inflammation, and influenza viruses. By leveraging liquid biopsy and other forms of early detection technologies, Quanterix enables timely monitoring before clinical symptoms manifest, thereby helping to safeguard the body against disease.

In 2013, the company announced that its single-molecule immunoassay technology had achieved multiplexed detection capabilities, enabling the simultaneous measurement of four low-abundance cytokines. This multiplexing capability is based on the company’s renowned Single Molecule Array (SiMoA) technology. SiMoA is currently the most sensitive immunoassay method available; while similar to traditional Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), it offers a 1,000-fold increase in sensitivity. In conventional ELISA, fluorescence generated by labeled enzymes disperses over a broad area, making it difficult to detect trace amounts of substances at low concentrations. In contrast, SiMoA ingeniously employs an array of femtoliter-scale reaction chambers to capture and detect individual molecules while confining fluorescence dispersion, thereby significantly enhancing detection precision. If ELISA is analogized to an analog television signal, SiMoA’s distributed array represents a clearer and more advanced digital signal.


 
Industry Experts Join, Bringing More Professional Technology to the Company

In June 2014, Kevin Hrusovsky, formerly Senior Vice President and President of Life Sciences and Technology at PerkinElmer, was appointed as CEO of Quanterix, while also serving as Executive Chairman of the Board. Hrusovsky was previously the CEO of Zymark; after Zymark was acquired by Caliper Life Sciences in 2003, he joined Caliper and served as its President and CEO. In 2011, when PerkinElmer acquired Caliper, Hrusovsky joined PerkinElmer, where he held the position of Senior Vice President and President of Life Sciences and Technology.



The funding will be used to research and develop new technologies.

The proceeds from this financing round will be used by the company to develop benchtop instruments, expand its panel of protein and nucleic acid biomarker assays, enter international markets, and integrate new pharmaceutical research findings into its existing technologies. The investment was led by ARCH Overage Fund, Cormorant Asset Management, and Trinitas Capital, with participation from ARCH Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Tufts University, Dr. David Walt, Hercules Capital, and several independent investors.

Compiled by Deng Xueyuan |