- Curesponse is a cancer precision medicine company whose platform, cResponse, accurately and quickly predicts a patient's response to cancer treatment.
- The company has raised $6M from investors including NCL Technology Ventures (UK) and aMoon (Israel) to facilitate scaling of clinical trials and international expansion by opening a UK laboratory to serve European patients.
- cResponse allows for rapid genomic sequencing followed by a 3D functional assay which preserves the tumor microenvironment for for up to two weeks. Results are empirical, based on the response of the cancer tissue rather than statistical probabilities provided by genomics and bioinformatics.
LONDON, June 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Curesponse, a cancer precision medicine company, has raised $6M from investors including NCL Technology Ventures (UK) and aMoon (Israel) for scaling clinical trials and international expansion to the UK.
The company's platform, cResponse, is a functional cancer diagnostic which preserves the patient tumour in 3D for up to two weeks, allowing observation of the cancer microenvironment's response to cancer therapies. The platform provides critical and actionable information for clinicians and patients by suggesting the optimal drug selection for each patient which can potentially save lives, reduce the cost of treatment and aid R&D clinical trials as a companion-diagnostic for pharmaceutical companies.
Current cancer diagnostics base treatment predictions on cancer cells alone when in fact tumor-microenvironment interactions and cancer tissue architecture can yield additional drug resistance with tumour cells being "rescued" or protected by surrounding healthy cells and bacteria. These key findings from which the cResponse technology was born are the work of Dr Straussman of the Weizmann Institute, whose papers demonstrating these effects have been published in Nature and Science. While the platform is undergoing clinical validation in Israeli hospitals, this investment raise will allow scaling the trials to the UK.
The Global Precision Medicine Market size exceeded USD 57 billion in 2019 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of over 11% between 2020 and 2026. Precision medicine will enable a new era of medicine in which researchers, providers, and patients work together to develop individualized care. Curesponse hopes to meet some of the increasing demand for personalized treatment and add to this market's commercial success.
"We are looking forward to expanding our clinical validation program into the UK and are very pleased to join forces with the impressive team at NCL Technology Ventures with this opportunity. The last few years have brought significantly greater attention to the importance of personalized medicine in patient care in the UK, and we are collaborating with leading clinical sites in London and throughout England to make this technology available to patients as quickly as possible," Guy Neev, Curesponse CEO.
"NCL is delighted to have invested in Curesponse as it addresses a high unmet need with brilliant frontier science. It is a welcome addition to our portfolio," Jonathan Synett, NCL Technology Ventures CIO.
About NCL Technology Ventures: NCL Technology Ventures is a UK-headquartered VC that focuses on investing in early-stage healthcare startups. Contact Maria Konovalova for more info or for liaising further interviews or additional comments.
