San Diego’s Celula Gets $15M for Molecular Diagnostics

[Clarification 5/19/10 11:00 am. See below.] Celula, a molecular diagnostic startup founded in San Diego five years ago, has raised $15 million in a secondary round of venture funding led by Palo Alto, CA-based Skyline Ventures, according to a VentureWire report today.

Celula’s top executives did not return a call this afternoon seeking to confirm the report, although Skyline lists Celula as a portfolio company, as do two other new investors, CHL Medical Partners of Stamford, CT, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures of Oakland, CA. Previous investors Enterprise Partners Venture Capital of San Diego and Versant Ventures, which has offices in the Bay Area and Newport Beach, CA, also participated in the Series B round, according to VentureWire. A previous investor, Arch Venture Partners, was not identified among the current investors.

[Updated 5/19/10 11:00 am] Celula CEO John Osth tells me by e-mail today this is the same round that I noted two months ago (but did not describe in any detail) as part of a rundown of the biggest venture deals in San Diego during the first quarter of 2010.

Celula was founded in May 2005 (happy fifth anniversary), according to New York-based CB Insights, but has maintained a low profile. The company’s website says Celula develops innovative instruments for personalized diagnostics that use advanced micro-fluidics and other technologies. Skyline venture offers what may be a more succinct description, saying, “Celula is developing a prenatal diagnostic test based on isolation of fetal cells from the mother’s blood.”

It might be worth noting that Celula co-founder Andy Katz was previously a senior executive at Genoptix Medical Laboratory (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GXDX]]), a Carlsbad, CA-based company that provides centralized diagnostic laboratory services for blood specialists. Enterprise Partners’ Drew Senyei, a Genoptix venture investor who has remained as board chairman, also was an early venture investor of Celula, and serves on Celula’s board.

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.