ProteoMediX Raises CHF 1.0 million in Extended Series B Financing

A new private investor who invests in carefully selected life science start-ups joined the existing group of investors including Altos Venture (Allschwil, Switzerland), a Swiss venture capital firm chaired by Dr. Walter Fischli (co-founder of Actelion), Zürcher Kantonalbank and several private investors experienced in life science investments.

ProteoMediX will use the new funds to further advance the development of its lead product for the early diagnosis of prostate cancer. The test is intended as an aid in the detection of prostate cancer, i.e. to inform men with elevated PSA (prostate specific antigen) and or suspicious DRE (digital rectal examination), about the likelihood of having a positive biopsy. The goal is to significantly reduce unnecessary prostate biopsies (today, 3 out of 4 biopsies are negative). The promising results of a pilot study showed that ProteoMediX’ test has the potential to reduce significantly more than 50% of negative prostate biopsies.

Dr. Ralph Schiess, CEO and co-founder commented: “We are delighted to have received additional funds that will enable us to gather additional clinical data and advance our test for the reduction of unnecessary biopsies”. “We are pleased that we received such a strong commitment from a new investor which fits perfectly to our current investor base”, said Christian Brühlmann, CFO and cofounder of ProteoMediX.

ProteoMediX AG is a privately held diagnostic company that was founded in March 2010 as a spin-off company from ETH Zurich. ProteoMediX enables personalized medicine by developing non-invasive diagnostic tests to detect and assess the prognosis of cancer, as well as to match patients with safer and more effective therapies. The first products are focusing on prostate cancer, the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men, where neither the detection nor the effective treatment is currently guaranteed. ProteoMediX owns the exclusive commercial rights on a set of protein-based biomarkers that were discovered with state-of-the-art proteomics technology developed at the ETH Zurich. These biomarkers are directly linked to the origin of cancer on a molecular level and allow to capture the complexity of the disease by combining multiple biomarkers. A combination of these showed superior results for the accurate detection of prostate cancer when compared to the current standard PSA test in a clinical proof of concept study. 

Altos Venture AG is a privately held venture capital firm located in Allschwil, BL. (info@altos-venture.ch)

Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) is the leading universal bank in the Zurich region, focusing on the national market. ZKB invests through bank-owned Venture-Fund PIONIER every year risk capital in about 20 start-up companies in the Zurich economic area. By doing so, ZKB assists the transfer of ideas into economy. (www.zkb.ch)