Waltham, MA-based diagnostics firm On-Q-ity has found $21 million in a Series A round of venture capital, according to a story this morning in peHUB. The developer of cancer tests was formed through the combination of CELLective Diagnostics and The DNA Repair Company, both portfolio companies of Mohr Davidow Ventures that had been unable to raise Series B rounds of financing individually.
Investors in the first-round financing included Mohr Davidow, Bessemer Venture Partners, Physic Ventures and Northgate Capital, peHUB reports. On-Q-ity is developing tests for breast and thoracic cancer, and the firm plans to focus later on diagnostics for prostate cancer.
The firm is developing tests that enable doctors to personalize cancer treatments for individual patients, according to its website. Its technologies include DNA repair biomarkers that can show whether a patient is likely to form resistance against certain drugs as well as microfludics chips used to capture and identify tumor cells in the bloodstream. Together the two key technologies could provide the ability to diagnose cancer, predict response to therapies, and track the progress of treatments, the company says.
Mara Aspinall, a former president of the Genzyme Genetics unit of Cambridge, MA-based biotech powerhouse Genzyme (NASDAQ:[[ticker:GENZ]]), is president and CEO of On-Q-ity.
