GREENVILLE, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--KIYATEC, Inc. today announced the initial $3 million closing of the company’s series B2 financing round. The round was led by VentureSouth and included LabCorp® (NYSE: LH).
“This validation and confidence by our investors, coupled with the exciting progress of our clinical trials, puts us on the path toward the next phase of growth and development,” said Matthew Gevaert, CEO of KIYATEC. “We are particularly excited to welcome LabCorp as a new investor because of the depth and breadth of their expertise in oncology. With the preclinical and clinical development strengths of LabCorp’s Covance Drug Development business, and their corporate position as a world leader in clinical testing, there is great potential synergy across the many ways KIYATEC’s technology can be used to improve cancer care.”
Proceeds from the financing will go toward KIYATEC’s ongoing clinical study, 3D-PREDICT, to validate KIYATEC’s proprietary assay as a patient-specific predictor of response to cancer therapies for solid tumors. The test analyzes a patient’s live cancer cells, grown in KIYATEC’s laboratory within a biologically relevant 3D microenvironment, to determine whether those cells respond to guideline-recommended cancer drugs. The 3D-PREDICT study is a fully prospective, multi-institutional effort to validate the predictive accuracy of the test and correlate response predictions to clinical outcomes among patients with newly diagnosed and relapsed ovarian cancer, glioblastoma and certain rare tumors.
The company has gained significant momentum in 2019. Recently, at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), KIYATEC demonstrated leading capabilities in modeling and predicting response to immuno-oncology therapies including checkpoint inhibitors. On April 10, KIYATEC was one of 20 companies recognized nationally on Capitol Hill as part of the 2019 University Innovation & Entrepreneurship Showcase. In the first quarter of 2019, KIYATEC added three clinical sites to its 3D-PREDICT study and expects to continue its momentum by adding additional sites in the second and third quarters.
About KIYATEC, Inc.
KIYATEC is dedicated to accurately modeling and predicting cancer patient response to drug therapies, using ex vivo 3D cell culture technology, in order to inform clinical decision making and drive drug development. Our predictive clinical tests provide oncologists with patient-specific response profiles to current standard of care drugs prior to treatment selection. Our predictive 3D models are being used by leading biopharmaceutical companies to increase the success of their preclinical and clinical drug development programs as they develop the cancer therapies of the future. www.kiyatec.com
