Norgine Ventures completes €3 million financing with PathoQuest
LONDON, UK. 05 September 2019, 08:00 BST. Norgine Ventures announced today that it has provided financing of up to €3 million to PathoQuest, a company using proprietary Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) based testing to improve pathogen detection. The company, a spin-out from Institut Pasteur, is based in Paris, France.
PathoQuest provides services to the biopharmaceutical industry to allow for faster and more comprehensive Viral Safety Testing, Cell Line Characterisation, and tailored solutions to accelerate drug development. Reliable, faster tests to ensure the quality of drugs are particularly important for advanced therapies, where production methods and timelines differs significantly from traditional pharmaceuticals, making the use of the recommended standardised tests challenging. The company has also developed the first CE Marked in vitro diagnostic NGS test, iDTECT™ Dx Blood, for detection of viral and bacterial pathogens in patients with suspected blood stream infections.
This investment will help the company accelerate growth of its business and support further clinical development of iDTECT™ Dx Blood.
Peter Stein, Managing Director at Norgine Ventures, said, “With this investment we support an exciting healthcare company that delivers novel solutions for challenges faced by biopharmaceutical companies in their quest to deliver safer, better treatments to patients. The application of NGS to clinical samples has enabled precision medicine in oncology, but few companies have the required expertise to apply NGS to the field of microbiology. PathoQuest’s medical device iDTECT™ Dx Blood is a promising tool to help clinicians tackle the issue of antibiotic stewardship.”
Jean-Francois Brepson, CEO at PathoQuest, commented, “We are pleased to complete this financing round since it will permit the company to further establish our position as a leader in the application of NGS to microbiologic testing. This financing is a direct result of the company’s efforts to date, including the rapid expansion of our Biologics Genomic Services business and the advancement of efforts with iDTECT Blood in a clinical setting.
Notes to Editors:
For further information please contact
Norgine Ventures
Julien Michaux, Norgine Ventures, jmichaux@norgine.com
PathoQuest
Christine Dangles, PathoQuest, +33 (0) 170 821 790 or contact@pathoquest.com
Media Contacts
Clara Bentham +44 (0)1895 826654 or +44 (0)7734 367883
Eleni Fistikaki +44 (0)1895 826227 or +44 (0)7825 389477
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About Norgine and Norgine Ventures
Across the globe in 2018, Norgine is proud to have helped 23 million patients and generated €395 million in net product sales to reinvest in medicines for the future, a growth of 15% over 2017.
Norgine is a leading European specialist pharmaceutical company that has been bringing transformative medicines to patients for over a century. We understand the complexities of the European healthcare systems and have a direct presence in 14 European countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand. We also have a strong global network of partnerships in non-Norgine markets.
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About PathoQuest
PathoQuest, a spin out of Institut Pasteur, is a life sciences company offering a game changing metagenomics approach to improving pathogen detection in biological samples. PathoQuest’s technology combines a Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) platform and a proprietary sample preparation process which is applicable to several types of samples with a proprietary pathogen genome sequence database and automated analysis pipeline. The company’s solution provides microbiologists and clinicians with a comprehensive analysis covering all known clinically relevant human pathogens.
Based on the company’s technological platform, PathoQuest also offers biopharmaceutical companies a disruptive approach to secure production of biologics like vaccines and recombinant proteins and reduce time to market. PathoQuest’s Biological Genomic Services are currently being utilized by several major biopharma companies.
About iDTECT™ Dx Blood
PathoQuest has developed iDTECT Blood, the first and only clinical CE IVD metagenomic test for infectious disease diagnosis. Using a single blood sample, the test provides clinicians and microbiologists with a culture-free method for detecting more than 1,200 bacterial or viral pathogens in a turn-around time of 48 hours. The test is run in expert microbiology laboratories, accredited for the method, which allows to minimize the time between sampling and laboratory processing, and to streamline the interactions and decision process between microbiologists and the treating clinical team.
