Roche Venture Fund was among investors and will get an observer seat on Curetis’ board.

Curetis reported the expansion of its Series A financing by €9.6 million (about $13.37 million). The additional funds reportedly increase the round to a total of €34.1 million (roughly $47.49 million) and total capital raised to date to €36.6 million (approximately $50.97 million).

The latest financing was led by Forbion Capital Partners together with Roche Venture Fund. Holger Reithinger, partner at Forbion, has joined Curetis’ board, and Roche will get an observer seat.

Since its inception in 2007, Curetis has developed the Unyvero™ instrument for handling disease-specific disposable cartridges for the analysis of various marker panels, covering both pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes. The workflow is fully automated and enables testing at the point of need, eliminating operator-induced variations and ensuring high-quality results in a short time frame, according to Curetis.

The first commercial application of Unyvero is for pneumonia testing. It has successfully proceeded through preclinical testing. “We are now well funded for the upcoming clinical trials as well as our planned 2012 European market launch of the Unyvero platform and pneumonia application,” according to Oliver Schacht, CEO of Curetis.

“There is an urgent unmet medical need for faster identification of pathogens and resistance markers due to increasing antibiotic resistance and even multidrug resistance,” Reithinger pointed out. “With pneumonia, most current diagnostics are still relying on culture-based technologies, which can take days to deliver results. Curetis’ technology platform will reduce this timeline to hours.”

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