Cerberus Ventures leads financing alongside five physician users of Virchow’s biopsy technologies
LA JOLLA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#Biopsy--Virchow Medical, Inc., manufacturer of the Crow’s Nest® Biopsy Catchment System and operator of the Virchow VaultTM Liquid Specimen Biorepository, today announced it has completed a $4 million seed financing led by Cerberus Ventures. Chenny Zhang of Cerberus Ventures will join the Virchow Board of Directors.
The working capital will be used to complete the development of the world’s first liquid specimen biorepository, the Virchow Vault, and deploy Biopsy Catchment® pilot programs at additional medical institutions across the United States.
Today, oncologists ordering genomic sequencing must rely on formalin-fixed tissue harvested in a patient’s biopsy procedure, which is often not available, and even when available is insufficient for clinical lab molecular diagnostics. At the same time, tens of thousands of dislodged tumor cells are generally wasted when the biopsy needle used is discarded. Virchow’s Crow’s Nest Biopsy Catchment System is designed to solve both those problems by capturing this otherwise wasted material. Clinical data generated from six U.S. medical institutions running Crow’s Nest concordance studies – in which the molecular testing results from standard formalin-fixed tissue specimens are compared to the molecular testing results from Liquid Companion Specimens (LCSs) from the Crow’s Nest – suggests additional benefits from using the technology. By collecting high quality molecular samples from residual cells that would otherwise be discarded, invaluable data can be extracted to offer insight into other options for cancer patients beyond chemotherapy, such as targeted immunotherapy, while reducing the need for repeat patient biopsies.
“The backing of Cerberus Ventures enables us to accelerate the education of the oncology, pathology, radiology, and reference lab communities about the clinical and financial benefits of banking high‑quality genetic material sourced from used biopsy needles,” said Alexander Arrow, MD, CEO of Virchow Medical. “It’s the best way to counteract tissue insufficiency, and Virchow has the technology and resources to harness that. We are humbled and honored to be in a position to help an enormous number of cancer patients.”
In addition to Cerberus Ventures’ investment, individuals participating in this financing include pathologists and interventional radiologists who have used Virchow’s Crow’s Nest Biopsy Catchment System and therefore experienced the benefits of creating LCSs from high-quality source material that would have normally been wasted after biopsy procedures.
“We see Virchow not just as a platform to improve cancer patient outcomes, but also as a differentiated data provider that can help accelerate AI benefits across the healthcare system,” said Chenny Zhang, Managing Director for Cerberus Ventures. “We have been incredibly impressed with the Virchow team’s experience and execution and look forward to this partnership in their next phase of growth.”
About Virchow Medical, Inc.
Formerly known as Corramedical, Inc., Virchow’s mission is to unlock critical molecular data for every cancer patient and enable precision medicine to save more lives. It does this by providing its hospital subscribers with a monthly supply of Crow’s Nest® Biopsy Catchment System units, which are used after core needle tumor biopsies to create Liquid Companion Specimens (LCSs). The company stores the LCSs for its customers in a unique biorepository, the Virchow Vault,TM housed in a CAP-accredited facility. As a result, oncologists can log on to www.virchowvault.com at any time after their patient’s biopsy and order genomic sequencing or other molecular testing without requesting their hospital’s pathology department to provide any of the tissue block. In an era which Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) tissue is limited and often insufficient, this ability to order sequencing using only high-quality material that is normally discarded on used needles is designed to provide every biopsy patient the potential opportunity to be treated with precision medicine targeted therapy.
For further information, visit www.virchowmed.com, and follow Virchow on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/virchowmed/.
Virchow Medical is an EvoNexus portfolio company.
Crow’s Nest®, Virchow VaultTM, Biopsy Catchment®, Precision Can’t WasteTM, and Liquid Companion SpecimenTM are trademarks of Virchow Medical, Inc.
Contacts
Press contact:
Carolyn Holck
Virchow Medical, Inc.
9191 Towne Centre Drive, Suite 150
La Jolla, CA 92122
+1-833-4-BIOPSY
carolyn@virchowmed.com
