Catch up on funding news in the Seattle area’s early-stage business ecosystem from late December and early January:
—Immusoft, which is developing technology to genetically reprogram patients’ B cells outside the body to produce therapeutic proteins, said it raised $20 million from investors. The Seattle-based company said a mix of new investors and return backers participated in the Series B round, including Alexandria Venture Investments, Breakout Ventures, DEFTA Partners, RBV Capital, and Mesa Verde Venture Partners. Immusoft said it plans to use some of the proceeds to advance its drug candidate for treating a type of mucopolysaccharidosis, a genetic condition in which the body is unable to break down long chains of sugar molecules.
Matthew Scholz founded Immusoft in 2009 with the vision of programming B cells, a type of antibody-producing white blood cells, to create disease-fighting proteins on their own (rather than delivering these proteins the traditional way through periodic injections).
—TurboPatent, a Seattle-based startup developing software to help businesses and law firms track invention ideas and prepare patent applications, raised nearly $3 million in new funding, according to two documents filed with securities regulators last week. According to its website, TurboPatent’s software uses machine learning algorithms to assign users’ ideas “patentability” scores after comparing the ideas to concepts in patents the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has already granted. Organizations that have used the company’s tools include Nvidia (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NVDA]]), PayPal (NASDAQ: [[ticker:PYPL]]), and ThermoFisher Scientific (NYSE: [[ticker:TMO]]), TurboPatent says.
TurboPatent, which launched in 2013 and previously operated under the name Patent Navigation, has raised more than $10.4 million from investors, SEC filings show.
—Bardy Diagnostics, which is developing a cardiac monitor and arrhythmia detection device, raised $6 million in debt funding and other securities, according to a regulatory filing. The Seattle-based startup’s Carnation Ambulatory Monitor (CAM) device is an hourglass-shaped patch that Bardy says is designed to be placed on the center of the patient’s chest, over the heart, to diagnose heart arrhythmia. According to its website, the company is developing complementary cloud-based software that lets patients and clinicians feed data recorded by the CAM device into a program that analyzes electrocardiograms.
Bardy’s CEO is Gust Bardy, a physician who previously led Cameron Health. That company, which was based in San Clemente, CA, and developed an implantable defibrillator, was sold to Boston Scientific (NYSE: [[ticker:BSX]]) in 2012 for a reported $150 million up front, plus potential milestone payments.
Five-year-old Bardy Diagnostics has raised more than $41 million in outside financing, according to securities documents.
—Redmond, WA-based VYRTY, which is developing digital tools it says will allow patients to download their health records to a drive the size of a credit card, raised more than $3 million in equity financing from 14 investors, per an SEC filing.
VYRTY, which launched in 2015 and is pronounced “ver-tee,” claims the health data patients store on the company’s drives can be accessed using any existing electronic health records software system. The idea is that a patient who goes to a doctor or hospital for the first time can share his or her health history with the organization to help avoid unnecessary tests, for example.
In late 2017, one of the country’s leading health records software developers, Verona, WI-based Epic Systems, introduced somewhat similar tools aimed at helping patients share data with hospitals and clinics where they haven’t previously received care. However, the features Epic introduced at that time did not include a hardware component, as VYRTY’s platform does.
