Photo by Flickr user Prince William County
From Prince William County Department of Economic Development:
“Ceres Nanosciences, Inc., a Prince William Science Accelerator startup company, recently announced the completion of a $3 million Series A financing as part of a larger $9 million Series A round. GreyBird Ventures, an early-stage venture fund firm, is leading the round with a commitment of up to $5.5 million over the next year and additional support. The funding will support the acceleration to market of a highly-sensitive diagnostic test for Lyme disease.
The Nanotrap®, a new transformative biotechnology, will enable the first-of-its-kind, urine-based Lyme Antigen test that will provide the most sensitive detection of Lyme disease, at the earliest stages of the disease. The Nanotrap is Ceres Nanosciences’ core technology, which is a novel nanoparticle technology, that provides powerful bio-marker capture and bio-fluid sample processing capabilities for a wide array of diagnostic applications and sample handling needs.
According to the Washington Business Journal, Ceres Nanoscience intends to market diagnostic tests for a variety of conditions, but is starting in the rapidly expanding market with its focus on Lyme disease. The company hopes to gain FDA approval for the test within two years. The company hopes to capture a large part of the addressable market for Lyme disease testing that could be greater than $100 million within five years of launch.
Nanotrap was invented at George Mason University and developed under funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for biomarker discovery applications. With support from the NIH, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, Ceres Nanoscience is focused on incorporating this technology into a range of innovative diagnostic products.
Last year, Ceres Nanosciences received a $980K award from the U.S. Department of Defense to adapt Nanotrap to capture immune makers from non-invasive sample types, in collaboration with Tufts University and George Mason University. That same year, the company was also recognized as one of Greater Washington’s pioneers of innovation by the Washington Business Journal.”
