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Mar 27 Nov 2018 – 09:00
Singapore
In a bold move for venture capital firms in the region, Venturecraft of Singapore has merged with medical technology start-up Mirxes to form Ark, a cancer detection company with an investment in Series A of $ 40 million.
The investment was led by Venturecraft shareholders and backed by Gaorong Capital (formerly Banyan Capital), one of the five largest venture capital firms in China, with a committed investment portfolio of more than 1.7 billion US dollars. Venturecraft shareholders include Alibaba co-founder, Sun Tongyu.
The goal of Ark is to eliminate late-stage cancer deaths over the next 30 years. The company has developed a blood test, the first in the industry, to use micro-ribonucleic acid (miRNA) as a cancer marker, making the test more sensitive and robust.
The early-stage cancer screening test was developed by Mirxes, which was split from A * Star in 2014. As part of the merger, Mirxes and Venturecraft both became wholly-owned subsidiaries of Ark. Mirxes is now the company's research and development center, while Venturecraft is the corporate branch that will also lead marketing and commerce.
Zhou Lihan, co-founder and co-CEO of Ark, told the Business Times that by building a complete value chain, the company is able to keep the cost of the cancer detection test at a minimum. affordable price. "For traditional medtech companies that only do manufacturing or R & D but outsource the rest of the value chain to third parties or collaborators, every part of the value chain will need to generate enough revenue and of profits, "said Dr. Zhou, former Mirxes' chief technology officer.
"But the fact that we are building the entire value chain allows us to remain profitable while making our product affordable."
The first Ark product will be a stomach cancer blood test that will detect cancer of the stomach at an early stage before the onset of clinical symptoms. It has been developed and validated in collaboration with the Singapore Gastric Cancer Consortium, A * Star Diagnostic Development Center, National University Hospital and Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
Venturecraft invested for the first time in Mirxes in 2016, injecting $ 4 million into the start-up. The company belongs to a particular class of venture capital firms called "venture capitalists". In addition to holding startups, development entrepreneurs provide operational resources, networking opportunities and industry knowledge to develop them. Business builders are more often found in the United States and Europe; One example is Twitter-based Avoid Corp., and Rocket Internet in Germany, which has a stake in Zalora.
Now endowed with new funds of 40 million US dollars, Ark is preparing to move to action with its marketing efforts for its two key markets, Singapore and China.
Dr. Zhou said that in the next 10 days, the company would submit the relevant documents as well as the analytical and clinical performance of its product to regulators in Singapore and China. He is waiting for an answer from the Singapore Health Sciences Authority in April or May 2019.
Ark has also already launched a plan to launch the largest clinical study in Asia, with the goal of recruiting 50,000 participants through partnerships with local governments and medical institutions.
The funds will also be used to develop new blood tests that can detect many other types of early-stage cancers, including lung, breast and colon cancers. Ark has also made hiring commitments. Its workforce has more than doubled to more than 110 people in the last four months.
In order to fill the gaps in its value chain, the company plans to launch the largest laboratory in China – in terms of throughput – for miRNA technology, said Isaac Ho, co-founder of Ark and Venturecraft. In the first phase of next year, the lab will employ about 90 people.
Regarding Venturecraft's portfolio companies, Ho said the company would continue to develop startups offering complementary products and solutions to Ark and leave the others.
Reebonz, Kaleido Biosciences, e27, Dental Slide, Attonics Systems and AIM Biotech are among the other startups in the portfolio.
Ho pointed out that the merger with Mirxes had helped streamline the company's investment choices and improve its strategy. In particular, start-up medtechs now have access to Ark's vast pool of clinical resources to validate their business model and technology.
Mr. Ho described it as "not going blind" or being at the mercy of the founders. "This helps us to look for better technologies that we can validate ourselves, so we make sure to apply them diligently, using our own platform," he said.
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