RainDance Technologies closes $16.5 million Series E financing round

Mar 3 2014

RainDance Technologies, Inc., an innovative genomics tools company making molecular testing of complex diseases more standardized and readily available, today announced that it has closed a $16.5 million Series E financing round extension. New investors include GE Ventures and Northgate Capital; all existing financial investors also participated in this round of financing.

The additional investment accelerates RainDance's commercial expansion and assay development initiatives for the company's products:

• RainDrop™ digital PCR system, which provides unparalleled sensitivity for research into early detection and monitoring of cancers, viruses, pathogens and immune markers;
• ThunderStorm™ targeted sequencing system, which advances research into and understanding of hereditary risk, inherited diseases and hematologic malignancies; and,
• ThunderBolts™ Cancer Panel, which delivers an actionable, fast, simple and low cost sequencing profile of somatic tumor mutations in molecular biopsies or biobanked samples.

GE Ventures now becomes the second strategic investor in RainDance, following an investment from Myriad Genetics in 2013, and shares its mission of addressing healthcare issues by accelerating development and commercialization of products that improve patient care and save lives. The liquid biopsy method using readily accessible fluids currently in development by RainDance is minimally-invasive, and a low cost healthcare solution for patients.

"We believe technology will play a major role in transforming patient care and by partnering with leading innovators we can help scale the best new ideas in major industries like healthcare," said Sue Siegel, CEO of GE Ventures and healthymagination. "We have followed RainDance's progress for many years and are impressed with how the company's cutting edge technologies are advancing the market and helping to bring in a new era of more accurate, non-invasive and cost-efficient testing for complex genetic disease research."

Roopom Banerjee, RainDance President and CEO, noted, "We welcome GE Ventures and Northgate as new investors. GE brings an unparalleled global network of businesses and partners, and is a logical outgrowth of the work we have under way with industry and research leaders committed to making the world healthier. Our success bringing in strategic investors such as GE Ventures and Myriad Genetics demonstrates we are a trusted platform partner to large customers in advancing the understanding, detection and monitoring of cancer and other important diseases."

RainDance has raised more than $100 million from investors including Mohr Davidow Ventures, Quaker BioVentures, Alloy Ventures, Acadia Woods Partners, Sectoral Asset Management, Northgate Capital and Capital Royalty Partners, to support the development and commercial expansion of its leading technologies for Digital PCR and Next-Generation Targeted Sequencing (NGS). The RainDrop Digital PCR System, which has 50x to 1000x the sensitivity of traditional quantitative PCR, enables researchers to analyze low-frequency alleles with true single molecule detection capability. Separately, RainDance's ThunderStorm System enables commercial laboratory customers to develop their own proprietary next-generation sequencing panels for disease research. RainDance products generally feature an 'open system' that leverages decades and billions of dollars already invested in NGS and PCR chemistries and innovations.

Most recently RainDance announced that it has developed the ThunderBolts™ Cancer Panel, a comprehensive NGS panel, for profiling actionable cancer mutations. ThunderBolts enables researchers to rapidly and cost-effectively analyze precious biopsy specimens such as those contained in bio-banks worldwide. The ThunderBolts Cancer Panel is currently being made available to select First Access Program (FAP) participants. Researchers from FAP sites will present data at a workshop at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in April 2014 in San Diego, California. For more information, on the ThunderBolts Cancer Panel, please visit RainDanceTech.com/ThunderBolts.)

Cowen Group 34^th Annual Health Care Conference

Roopom Banerjee will be presenting more information on RainDance during the Cowen Group's 34^th Annual Health Care Conference on March 3, 2014 at 10:00am at the Boston Marriott Copley Place in Boston.

SOURCE RainDance Technologies, Inc.