Tasso Inc., a pioneer in clinical-grade, at-home, self-sampling blood collection, announced that its Tasso-M20 device has received a CE (Conformité Européene) mark certification and has successfully fulfilled all of the European Union’s performance, safety, and relevant product requirements. With this marking, Tasso is now able to provide pharmaceutical companies, leading medical institutions, and government health centers across the European Union and other CE mark geographies with a best-in-class diagnostic experience for their patients.
 
The Tasso-M20 device enables companies to offer a convenient, engaging, and friendly decentralized blood testing solution that ultimately results in faster and simpler clinical trials. The Tasso-M20 was designed to collect, store, and transport samples for analysis related to drug level or biomarker monitoring that include small molecules, proteins, antibodies, or nucleic acids. Four dried samples with a controlled volume of 20μL (roughly equivalent to two 6 mm traditional DBS spots), can be collected by patients at home, stably shipped, and processed at qualified laboratories. Tasso also provides companies with easy shipping and logistics support to further simplify the entire workflow.
 
“We are now witnessing a complete paradigm shift toward convenient patient care, with telemedicine appointments, virtual clinical trials, and remote patient monitoring applications all rising in prevalence. These decentralized health applications will persist beyond the COVID-19 pandemic because they empower more actionable clinical data and better outcomes for patients,” said Ben Casavant, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Tasso. “The Tasso-M20 device is the first product of its kind to offer a convenient, clinical-grade, and virtually painless blood collection experience. We are excited to now make it broadly available across the European Union and enable more customers to benefit from faster, simpler, decentralized clinical trials.”
 
The Tasso-M20 whole dried blood sample device complements the Tasso-SST device for liquid blood diagnostics. Leading global academic medical institutions, government agencies, and pharmaceutical organizations are adopting Tasso products for a wide variety of applications, including chronic disease monitoring, infectious disease surveillance, athletic and sports testing, virtual clinical trials, and global health. The company announced an oversubscribed $17 million Series A financing round and has been using the proceeds to scale manufacturing and operations to meet increased demand for its portfolio of Tasso products.
 
Tasso is an emerging healthcare company that is transforming the traditional blood collection process with a more convenient and virtually painless approach that focuses on the patient. The company’s devices allow people to collect blood with the push of a button from the comfort and privacy of their home, and then mail the samples back to a qualified laboratory for analysis. Headquartered in Seattle, Tasso is privately held and funded by grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the National Institutes of Health, by investments from Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Foresite Capital, Vertical Venture Partners, Techstars, and Cedars Sinai, and by co-development deals with various industry leaders.