Diagnostic company Visby Medical has expanded its over-subscribed Series E financing round to include an additional $35 million for a total of over $135 million raised in the round.
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The additional investment was led by Lightrock, who joined existing Series E investors including John Doerr, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, ND Capital, Artiman Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, Blue Water Life Science Advisors and J Ventures.
The additional investment will be used to enable Visby Medical to scale production capacity, further expand the product menu to include advanced respiratory health tests, antimicrobial resistance panels, and deliver PCR diagnostics to consumers at-home.
Visby Medical founder and CEO Adam de la Zerda, PhD, said: “At Visby Medical, we are revolutionising patient care by developing diagnostics that healthcare providers can use to test for any infection at anytime, anywhere. Especially during these times of market slowdown, our investors have shown significant confidence in Visby’s innovative technology and mission. This funding will enable us to further our goal to provide the world’s first instrument-free handheld PCR platform to accurately and rapidly test for a variety of serious infections to anyone who needs it.”
Visby’s PCR diagnostic technology is being developed in multiple therapeutic areas and is aimed to address a growing need: to combat the significant rise in infectious diseases. The FDA-cleared Visby Medical Sexual Health Click Test is already being used in U.S. CLIA-waived settings, such as urgent care and women’s health clinics, to detect gonorrhoea, chlamydia and trichomonas via self-collected vaginal swabs and deliver results in less than 30 minutes, eliminating the need for presumptive treatment.
Ashish Puri, partner at Lightrock, said: “Visby Medical have produced a diagnostics tool capable of transforming patient care, enabling accurate results over the course of patients’ visit. The innovation behind this versatile product has the potential to decentralise lab testing, producing major benefits for communities around the world and opening up access to affordable healthcare results. Lightrock invests in businesses using scalable technologies to deliver real and significant impacts and Visby aligns perfectly with that vision.”
