Biomarker Diagnostics Company Lands $23M

^{The German diagnostics company plans to use the capital to further push out its platform.}

Sphingotec GmbH said today it has raised roughly $23 million in financing, which is slated to further propel the predictive diagnostics company into hospitals across the world.

Based in Germany, sphingotec said it plans to use the money to push its automated point-of-care testing platform to more markets. The technology, acquired from an outside company this past May, is already in use in about 1,000 healthcare organizations in Europe and the Middle East. It performs more than 100,000 tests annually, according to the announcement.

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Sphingotec GmbH develops biomarkers for prediction, diagnosis and therapy. The innovator has primarily focused on congestive heart failure and septic shock, though its pipeline is geared toward predicting risks associated with cardiovascular diseases, obesity and breast cancer.

“Sphingotec’s acute biomarker tests target a global multimillion Euro market opportunity in a field of high unmet medical need,” noted Matthias Fehr, an investment adviser at HBM Partners, one of the investors in this round. “We are convinced that the company’s biomarker portfolio has the potential to significantly improve decision making in acute settings.”

Ultimately, the company’s technologies may help intensive care units, emergency departments and other acute care teams make better decisions surrounding conditions like sepsis, heart failure and kidney injury.

The company’s point-of-care platform will also include a biomarker related to leaky blood vessels, which may help patients with congestive heart failure and cut costs stemming from acute heart failure. This particular biomarker is also capable of predicting circulatory shock in patients with sepsis. Sphingotec said both of these functions offer clinical assistance to conditions with “unmet medical needs.”

The platform includes another biomarker that provides information on the glomerular filtration rate, helping clinicians track kidney function in patients at high risk.

Along with HBM, Wellington Partners co-led the funding round. Representatives from both organizations have joined sphingotec’s board.

Andreas Bergmann, Ph.D., sphingotec’s founder and CEO, said the new money will help grow the company’s distributor network, beginning in Central Europe.

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