NEW YORK — Micronoma, a developer of microbiome-based cancer detection technology, said on Thursday that it has raised $3 million in seed funding in a financing round led by SymBiosis.
Micronoma was spun out of the University of California, San Diego, in 2019 to commercialize technology based on the discovery that unique microbial DNA signatures in blood and tissue could distinguish healthy individuals from patients with a variety of cancers.
Earlier this year, UCSD scientists Rob Knight and Gregory Poore — who cofounded the company with CEO Sandrine Miller-Montgomery, who formerly headed the university's Center for Microbiome Innovation — published a study demonstrating their finding using whole-genome and whole-transcriptome sequencing data from over 10,000 patients with 33 cancer types in The Cancer Genome Atlas.Â
With the seed funding, Micronoma aims to develop its first product, an assay for the early detection of lung cancer, with the goal of launching it within two years. The San Diego-based company will also use the money to establish a CLIA lab and for additional development activities.