Canadian Government Invests in Young Molecular Diagnostics Company

Molecular diagnostics company Xagenic Inc. has been promised an investment of approximately $1 million (US) from the Canadian government, which it intends to use to support design and development of the first lab-free molecular diagnostic platform that targets a variety of cell and specimen types with a 20-minute time to result.

Gary Goodyear, minister of state for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), made the announcement at the conference board of Canada’s Business Innovation Summit 2013 in Toronto on February 19. The Investing in Business Innovation initiative exists to boost private sector investment in start-up businesses to accelerate the development of new products, processes and practices and bring them to market.

“This investment from FedDev complements our $10 million Series A venture capital round, which included investments from CTI Life Sciences Fund, the Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund (OETF) and QIAGEN N.V.,” said Shana Kelley, chief technology officer of Xagenic.

“In the current environment, financial support from the government enhances our capabilities to develop cutting edge technologies that improve patient care,” added Ihor Boszko, the company’s director of business development.

Xagenic is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and has a fully automated technology platform designed to enable widespread decentralized diagnostic testing to be performed outside of clinical testing laboratories. The company is developing infectious disease diagnostic tests to allow the detection of a variety of analytes in situations where rapid test turnaround will provide clinically actionable results to improve patient care and reduce healthcare costs.