News
Epocal Announces Series B Financing and Funding Support from the Government of Canada
Press Release
Ottawa, Canada
April 7, 2005
Epocal , a developer of enterprise point-of-care blood diagnostic products, announces the first closing of a Series B investment round and funding support from the Government of Canada.
The Series B round, comprising an investment of approximately CDN $5M, was led by Genesys Capital Partners through the New Generation Biotech Equity Fund. A second closing is scheduled for later this spring.
The Company is also pleased to announce approximately CDN $1M of funding support, awarded by the National Research Council's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP). This particular contribution was made possible by a joint program offered by NRC-IRAP and Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC), an Industry Canada led initiative.
Proceeds of the financing will be used to complete the development and launch the Company's blood diagnostic platform. The Company anticipates initiating the beta trials and regulatory approval cycle later this year, with product launch scheduled for 2006.
The EPOC™ System, the Company's enterprise point-of-care blood analysis platform combines ultra-low cost, smart-card like diagnostic cards containing biosensors and Fluidics-on-Flex™ circuits with ultra-low cost bedside card readers. The readers communicate wirelessly to a mobile handheld computer or PDA for immediate bedside results and to a portal on a hospital network for centralized data management. The platform delivers lab quality results to the bedside at 1/10 th the manufacturing cost of conventional point-of-care testing solutions. The product development pipeline includes cards for a variety of test applications including immunoassay biomarker tests, general chemistries, hematology and hemostasis.
Epocal CEO Dr. Imants Lauks stated that "We are pleased with the enthusiastic support from investors, and that our technology was identified by IRAP-TPC as an enabling technology with strategic value to Canada ."
Kelly Holman , Managing Director of Genesys Capital Partners ( www.genesyscapital.com ), commented "The end market price of existing acute point-of-care products has proven to be a barrier for the widespread adoption of point-of-care in hospitals. Epocal has developed a product providing the same quality of results as existing products, however, at a much lower price. This will open up the market dramatically."