Biosensia to use 1.2m funding to target US and Europe

Point-of-care diagnostics company Biosensia has secured funding of €1.2m which will enable it to pursue regulatory approval and advance its commercial partnership strategy in Europe and the US.

Headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin, Biosensia employs five people and intends to increase staff numbers to 15 by 2013 as part of its commercialisation strategy.

There is a significant unmet need for more convenient, accurate and affordable point of care solutions, and Biosensia is poised to become a major player in the development of next-generation, point of care diagnostic products, according to CEO Diarmuid Flavin. 

Biosensia’s platform, RapiPlex, is a point of care in vitro diagnostics platform. It enables the transition of complex immunoassays from the central laboratory to the point of care across a wide variety of sample types. RapiPlex has multiple point-of-care applications including medical, environmental, food safety and security.

RapiPlex can perform up to 12 separate analyses simultaneously on a single sample and provides test results in as little as five minutes.  The RapiPlex platform is also integrated with an optical reader which provides a numerical read-out, which does not require user interpretation.

Commercialisation plans accelerating

“Our commercialisation plans and technology are progressing rapidly. With this financing, the company can further capitalise on its revolutionary RapiPlex technology. We see a significant market demand across a range of diagnostic applications for our RapiPlex platform,” said Flavin.

The funding round was led by ACT Venture Capital, through its AIB Start-up Accelerator Fund, and included existing investors Seroba BioVentures and Atlantic Bridge.

John O’Sullivan, director, ACT Venture Capital, said the RapiPlex platform had “huge potential” across a broad range of applications, making this a great investment opportunity for ACT.