Biotia Raises $2.4M in Seed Financing

Biotia, a startup providing DNA sequencing-based microbial surveillance services and infectious disease diagnostic tests for hospitals, said recently that it has closed a $2.4 million seed financing round.
 
Falcon III Ventures, a Boston-based biotech fund, led the round, with participation from other venture capital firms and angel investors, according to Biotia. 
 
The company also added Barry Zeman, Don Goldmann, and Steven Salzberg to its scientific and clinical advisory board. 
 
New York-based Biotia will apply the funding to continue development of its diagnostic testing methods, including Chelsea, software that applies artificial intelligence to help care providers identify pathogens that could lead to hospital-acquired infections.Backed by a curated and annotated database of more than 16,000 microbial species, Chelsea offers what the company calls "precision metagenomic" surveillance to turn results from a single microbiome test into an actionable report of microbial profiles and predictive drug resistance.
 
Falcon III Ventures Cofounder and CEO Yiannis Monovoukas said in a statement that Biotia has differentiated itself through a clinically focused database and actionable microbiology report."They have led pioneering work with hospitals, clinicians, and scientists, and built a sorely needed clinical tool to identify and control infectious diseases,"he said in a statement.
 
Biotia also plans on introducing CAP- and CLIA-certified clinical diagnostic tests early next year. "After extensive validation, we are expanding our offerings from environmental testing and research-use patient tests to patient diagnostics to provide hospitals with better tools to diagnose and control infectious disease, improve health outcomes, and save lives," Biotia CEO Niamh O'Hara said.