The Cancer Diagnostic Firm, Pillar Biosciences Raises $29.7M in Series C Round of Financing

By Apac CIO Outlook | Monday, July 06, 2020

The Natick, Massachusetts, and Shanghai-based Biosciences Company raised $29.7M from its Series C round of financing

Fremont, CA: The cancer diagnostic firm Pillar Biosciences closes a $29.7 Million Series C preferred stock financing round recently. ORI Healthcare Fund led the latest round of funding. The company also launched the CE marketing for its Onco/Reveal Dx lung and colon cancer in vitro diagnostic assay.

The Natick, Massachusetts-based assay developer, said it would use these funds to accelerate the widespread extension of its clinical and research-use next-gen sequencing panels and expand its global commercial reach.

"We are a strong believer in using NGS tumor testing to make precision medicine the first-line treatment," Simone Song, Senior Partner of ORI Healthcare Fund, said in a statement. "Pillar's Slimamp technology is fast, accurate, user friendly, and cost-effective. We have confidence that Pillar will fulfill an unmet medical need and bring true benefits to cancer patients."

The Slimamp target enrichment chemistry offers a single tube that is an amplicon-based assay and is also compatible with Illumina, Thermo Fisher Scientific Ion Torrent, and MGI sequencing platforms. Pillar also provides services and bioinformatics tools that allow variant calling.

Previously, Pillar had received an $18 million investment from the same ORI Healthcare Fund in 2016 and has earlier signed a co-marketing agreement with BGI subsidiary MGI Tech along with an IVD development partnership contract with Illumina.

In 2019, the firm entered a joint venture contract with China Biotech Services Holdings to offer diagnostic products and services to the regions of Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. The same company, China Biotech Services Holdings, took part in the undisclosed Series B funding round by Pillar.

The company's custom product that gained approval from the New York State Department of Health guides the prescription of six varieties of therapies simultaneously, reducing the need for conducting repeat tests, and enables the treatment decisions to be made in 4 days.

Pillar has also secured distributors in Israel, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, and ASEAN countries recently.