Xagenic (pronounced ex-a-GEN-ic) is a medical startup dedicated to making diagnoses faster and easier for both patients and clinicians. Founded by Shana Kelley, a University of Toronto biochemistry professor, the premise is simple: allow medical professionals to diagnose of a range of illnesses on-site, wherever patients are, without needing to wait for a lab to process test results.
The product Xagenic currently has under development—described as a “molecular diagnostic platform”—can provide test results in 20 minutes.
It is promising enough that Xagenic recently announced a second closing of its Series B financing: $25.5 million, to be precise.
Among Xagenic’s investors are the Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund and BDC Capital, a subsidiary of the Business Development Bank of Canada. Clinical and analytic studies of the new platform are planned to start later this year, and the company aims to launch its product in 2015 or 2016.
Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan awarded Xagenic its 2014 award for New Product Innovation Leadership.
In its announcement of the award, Forst & Sullivan said that "it is unique as a low-cost, simple, rapid sample-to-answer desktop instrument, requiring no manual sample processing or cold storage… For its portfolio of cartridge-based tests, Xagenic focuses on infectious diseases (HSV 1+2, Flu A+B, CT/NG, strep A, group B strep, trichomoniasis, HCV and upper respiratory infections) that will benefit the most from rapid on-site testing. The company also intends to apply the platform to counter a critical public health threat—antimicrobial resistance.”
In short: it’s the medical equivalent of cutting out the middleman, allowing clinicians to know right away if a patient has a certain illness and begin treatment right away. If the product’s development continues successfully, it has the potentially to significantly streamline the diagnostic process, reducing health care costs, saving clinicians time, and minimizing stress for patients waiting to hear about their test results.
Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Xagenic