Eutropics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Eutropics) announced today that it has been awarded the highly competitive SBIR Targeted Technologies (START) program Stage III grant from MassVentures, a venture capital firm focused on identifying and supporting high potential drivers of the Massachusettsinnovation economy. The funding will help enable Eutropics to commercialize its PraediCare Dx™ cancer drug response sensor platform that is used to guide development and selection of emerging treatment options for individual cancer patients.
Eutropics' PraediCare Dx platform has proven success in accurately identifying features of patients' cancer cells that render them more responsive to treatment. The platform is now in use by several partnering pharmaceutical companies for guiding development of new treatments in clinical studies. A next generation of the platform has improved performance across a broad range of cancer indications is also being developed. The timing of the PreadiCare Dx™ rollout is well suited for new targeted cancer therapies that are highly effective only in subsets of patients. Accurately identifying these subsets has become essential to achieving the most benefit to the patient.
In funding early-stage, high-growth Massachusetts companies, the START program leverages vetted commercial stage technologies developed under SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grants from federal agencies, including the NIH/NCI. Since the program's founding in 2012, START has provided $21.1 million in non-dilutive investment funding to 85 SBIR supported companies, and helped the winners raise additional capital of over $1 billion with these companies now employing nearly 2,000 people in Massachusetts.
"We are very grateful to have been awarded the prestigious START III funding," stated Michael Cardone, Ph.D., Eutropics' CEO. "Eutropics' efforts are attuned to the NIH/NCI SBIR mission to improve cancer treatment through personalized medicine. MassVentures is also well aligned with the SBIR's mission and the Commonwealth's vision for innovative economy development. This shared vision brings unique leverage that will prompt the benefit our company can provide to patients."
"START Stages I and II enabled Eutropics to pursue commercial development of PraediCare Dx™," said Brian Ward, Ph.D. Eutropics' Business Advisor. "These efforts promoted the platform leading to its recognition as an important tool in the drug development process and garnered uptake from pharmaceutical partners, a key market for our products."
About MassVentures (www.mass-ventures.com)
MassVentures is a venture capital firm focused on fueling the Massachusetts innovation economy by funding early-stage, high-growth Massachusetts companies as they move to commercialization. MassVentures focuses on Series A investments and considers occasional and opportunistic seed rounds. Examples of companies that have been funded by MassVentures include: Ginkgo Bioworks (www.ginkgobioworks.com), LifeImage (www.lifeimage.com), and Veritas Genetics (www.veritasgenetics.com).
About Eutropics (www.eutropics.com)
Eutropics is a clinical biomarker driven diagnostics company developing a novel approach for guiding cancer treatment, enabling the delivery of personalized medicine to patients. Eutropics' PraediCare Dx™ is a powerful in vitro diagnostics platform that can accelerate drug development and guide cancer patients' treatment. PraediCare Dx™ platform is a novel technology that that can markedly improve drug treatment success.
