NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Blue Ox Healthcare Partners, LLC (“Blue Ox” or the “Firm”), an investment firm focused on providing growth capital to healthcare companies in the middle market, today announced that it led a $52 million Series E investment in Epic Sciences, Inc. (“Epic”), a leading diagnostics company developing novel solutions to personalize and advance cancer treatment and management. Proceeds from the fundraising round are expected to be used to accelerate Epic’s clinical studies for oncology decision support services in its pipeline and execution of its long-term growth plan.

Based in San Diego, Epic is transforming late stage cancer treatment by applying computer vision and machine learning techniques to match patients’ individual cancer cells to individualized drug therapies. The result is prolonged life and lower treatment costs. Epic’s business aligns well with Blue Ox’s strategy of investing in and growing healthcare companies focused on individuality and value-based care. The Blue Ox management team will bring its deep healthcare industry experience and operational expertise to assist Epic in achieving its financial and strategic goals.

Charles D. Kennedy, MD, Managing Partner at Blue Ox, said, “Healthcare is moving towards individualized therapies and financing. Companies that create the science and technology innovations must have the resources to grow and the expertise to introduce these disruptive services to a value-based healthcare industry. Epic’s revolutionary diagnostics and decision support analytics optimize cancer treatment by ensuring each patient’s unique cancer cells get therapy that offers the highest likelihood of prolonged survival while avoiding wasteful treatments that the patient’s individual cancer cells do not have the biology to respond to.”

Over the last ten years, Blue Ox has invested in healthcare companies at various stages of development. The Firm typically makes investments up to $30 million, with the ability to selectively invest in larger opportunities.

Oded Levy, co-founder and Managing Partner at Blue Ox, added, “We believe Epic has enormous potential to transform cancer treatments. We look forward to leveraging our healthcare industry relationships, and financial, operational and strategic expertise to drive significant value for the business over time.”

Murali Prahalad, Ph.D., president and Chief Executive Officer of Epic, concluded, “Epic is pleased to partner with Blue Ox whose investment is a vote of confidence in the science and data analytics infrastructure we have built. We are excited to work closely with Blue Ox’s talented team of entrepreneurial business and healthcare professionals, who can offer the strategic and operational guidance in bringing our disruptive innovations to market.”

About Blue Ox Healthcare Partners

Blue Ox Healthcare Partners, LLC is a private equity investment firm focused on providing capital to growth stage healthcare companies targeting the industry’s transformation to individuality and value-based care. Blue Ox targets emerging companies in the middle market with commercial products and solutions in healthcare services, HCIT, and medical and life sciences technologies, whose innovations, strategies and operations are poised for growth. The Firm invests in companies where it believes its team’s operational expertise and deep healthcare industry experience can be leveraged to a company’s long-term benefit. For additional information, please visit www.blueoxhcp.com.

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