Sofia Angels Ventures – New Investment Press Release
In August 2022 Sofia Angels Ventures (SAV), a €13M venture fund backed up by EIF for angel and private co-investment, headquartered in Sofia, announced its fourth investment – Digistain INC.
Digistain INC is a US technology company in the MedTech industry, operating in the US, EU, UK and India, which has developed a platform technology that uses infrared light to detect chemical changes occurring in tumor samples, which are known to correlate with the progression of the breast cancer disease.
This is the first tumor profiling company to deliver a personalized risk report for breast cancer patients to aid physicians and patients decide whether cytotoxic therapy is needed in addition to endocrine therapy.
The Digistain Prognostic Score uses a proprietary optical scan of the tumor tissue to capture a unique spectral signature of the tumor. It then performs an analysis on >10,000 data points factoring in other clinico-pathological factors to compute a risk of recurrence with tamoxifen treatment alone that is validated on over 1200 patients.
The Company is able to measure a characteristic of the biopsy chemistry known as the NCR (nuclear to cytoplasmic ratio), which is essentially the fraction of DNA/RNA present in the cells. The deregulation of the cell cycle, which is common to all cancer diseases, leads to the increase the NCR. This allows Digistain’s platform technology to work well across the whole spectrum of cancer diseases.
Digistain INC solves the over-treatment problem with a quick (24h) cost-effective test that allows more patients to be tested than currently economically possible. This is much faster than the current status quo (which can take two-three weeks). Based on competitors’ case studies, this immediately allows hospitals and insurers to save 30% on chemotherapy (not to mention the saved bad emotions of patients that could be devasted from the uncertainty while waiting too long for such critical test results).
The funds raised in the current seed round are close to USD 1M. Along with Sofia Angels Ventures, other investors are Y Combinator and Harvard Seed Capital, several other private VCs and a number of angels from across the world. This will help the Company receive FDA approval, as well as complete new clinical trials, further build up the team and start commercial activities.
03.08.2022
Sofia
