Personalized medicine test maker AssureRx Health has raised a $12.5 million series C round of investment that it’ll use to help commercialize its tests that help doctors pick the right drugs based on a patient’s genes.
The latest funding for the Cincinnati-area company is further evidence of how lucrative field investors believe personalized medicine can be. Today’s series C investment follows an $8 million line of credit earlier this year and an $11 million series B round of funding last year.
The funding will go toward expanding sales coverage, sponsoring multiple clinical studies and developing new products, the company said.
The funding announcement caps a strong May for AssureRx. Earlier this month, the company released its second product, called GeneSightRx ADHD. The drug helps doctors select the drug for patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder that’s least likely to cause unwanted side effects.
Its first test, GeneSightRx Psychotropic, takes the same approach for psychiatric drugs.
The latest round was led by Four Rivers Group and existing investors Claremont Creek Ventures and Sequoia Capital, and featured a host of other participants that include Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Mayo Clinic.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“Our goal is to build the leading clinical informatics company providing pharmacogenomic and other treatment decision support products to help physicians individualize the treatment of patients with neuropsychiatric and other disorders,” CEO Jim Burns said in a statement.
In the past, AssureRx has said that future products could include tests that help doctors choose medications for patients who have neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, as well as disorders such as posttraumatic stress.
A company spokesman didn’t immediately return a call.
