BioTheranostics, Acquired in 2008, To Go Independent in $32M Deal

bioTheranostics CEO Nicolas Barthelem

San Diego-based bioTheranostics, which has operated since 2008 as a division of the French diagnostics conglomerate bioMérieux, said it has secured $32 million in financing to commercialize its diagnostic cancer tests and expand its clinical development programs.

MVM Life Science Partners led the financing round, with participation of Canepa Advanced Healthcare Fund and HealthQuest Capital, according to a statement yesterday.

The financing will enable bioTheranostics to operate as an independent company, following its spin out from bioMérieux, which will retain a minority stake. It was unclear from the statement how much control bioTheranostics had over its own fate, or whether bioMérieux was essentially spinning out a business unit it had operated for the past eight years.

BioTheranostics had its origins as AviaraDx, a Carlsbad, CA-based startup specializing in molecular diagnostic technologies. BioMérieux acquired it for $60 million in 2008.

By early 2010, bioTheranostics was ready to commercialize a molecular test called the Breast Cancer Index (BCI), which analyzes the extent to which two biomarkers found in tumor biopsies are turned on or off. As Xconomy reported in late 2009, the test was successful in identifying a particular type of breast cancer, known as estrogen-receptor positive/lymph node negative breast cancer, found in 60 to 70 percent of all breast cancer patients.

In late 2014, bioTheranostics hired Nicolas Barthelemy as CEO. Barthelemy had previously held a number of executive positions at Life Technologies, now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: [[ticker:TMO]]), including chief commercial officer and president of the cell systems division.

In the company’s statement, Barthelemy said, “We thank bioMérieux for its support over the years, which allowed us to develop and demonstrate the clinical value of our two important marketed cancer diagnostic tests: Breast Cancer Index (BCI) and CancerTYPE ID.”

Barthelemy also explained the growth financing will allow bioTheranostics to accelerate momentum the company has gained with the approval of Medicare coverage for the BCI test in late 2014. In 2015, bioTheranostics said it had quadrupled its growth rate and doubled its revenue over the prior year.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.