Protecting pharmaceutical, personal-care products and medical device market products from microbial contamination is the rather timely mission of startup Rapid Micro Biosystems. The transmission of antibiotic-resistant bacteria via contaminated duodenoscopes has been turning up in a lot of news headlines and courtrooms lately. The startup has raised a $25 million Series C round to support its commercial efforts.
Existing investors, several of whom are prestigious and deep-pocketed, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Longitude Capital, Quaker Partners, TPG Biotech and TVM Capital participated in the financing.
The round also included new investors Hepalink USA, the U.S. subsidiary of one of the largest suppliers of heparin sodium and crude heparin that is headquartered in China, and family office Richard Mellon and Sons.
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| The Growth Direct System--Courtesy of Rapid Micro |
"Rapid Micro Biosystems' innovative technology is well positioned to meet the customer requirements for automated microbial detection and enumeration," said TPG Biotech Managing Director Dr. Fred Cohen.
Rapid Micro will use the financing to grow its commercial and manufacturing operation to support its Growth Direct System, which is designed to be used for environmental monitoring, sterility and bio-burden testing. It started marketing the system in June 2014.
In October, Rapid Micro named Robert Spignesi, a former VP and the Americas GM of Thermo Fisher Scientific ($TMO), to the position of CEO. Spignesi has more than 20 years of leadership experience.
"Since the commercial launch of the next generation Growth Direct System last year, we have seen tremendous positive response from the world's leading pharmaceutical, personal care and medical device companies," Spignesi said in a statement. "This additional investment will fuel our strategic expansion plans."
The technology uses the natural auto-fluorescence of microbes and doesn't require reagents. It is based on non-destructive, rapid detection and enumeration technology based on the compendial method for microbial quality control in pharmaceutical manufacturing. It's designed to return a result within hours.
The system has two incubators with an incubation capacity of more than 700 environmental monitoring cassettes. Samples are robotically loaded, incubated and analyzed.
"We are eager to be part of an innovative company like Rapid Micro Biosystems that can offer a tangible return on investment through process automation and rapid detection to a vast array of microbial quality control laboratories across industries," said Hepalink USA Director and CFO Shawn Lu in a statement.
- here is the release