MedCare Investment Funds led the equity funding round for Seno Medical Instruments which raised $34.6 million of the $39 million Series C financing, a statement about the deal said.
Based in San Antonio, Texas, Seno Medical Instruments Inc is a medical imaging firm that has developed opto-acoustic imaging, a tool that seeks to improve how breast cancer is diagnosed. Proceeds from the recent round will be deployed towards the company's current US Pivotal Study of the Imagio breast imaging service. Part of the financing will also go to activities that will help the company get a CE Mark in Europe by the end of this year's first quarter. At present, there are 16 hospitals and imaging centers all over the US that have registered patients in the Imagio Pivotal Study, the statement said.
MedCare Investment Funds Chairman Dr. Harry Jacobsen said in the statement, "We believe Seno Medical's opto-acoustic imaging platform has the potential to answer a significant unmet need in the diagnosis of breast cancer. Breast biopsies, the current standard of care for diagnosing or ruling out cancer, are the most expensive part of the breast cancer diagnostic process. By providing a real-time blood map co-registered with ultrasound images, we believe that opto-acoustics can provide radiologists more information than ever before to help them confidently rule out cancer so that fewer women with benign lesions will have to undergo biopsies and the worry that can come from the process. We look forward to seeing the results of the company's ongoing Pivotal Study."
Imagio is able to produce an image by using "opto-acoustics" that gives a distinctive blood map in and around breast masses that could possibly indicate breast cancer. Imagio is not like conventional imaging modalities used today because it does not subject patients to x-rays which could possibly be harmful or use agents for contrast that need to be injected to the body, the statement said.
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