Nanopath, a molecular diagnostics company enabling high-quality molecular testing in minutes, has closed $10 million in Series A funding that will support development and commercialization of the company’s biosensing platform that aims to transform how women’s pelvic and gynecologic infections are diagnosed.

“Nanopath’s mission is deeply rooted in improving women’s health and even more broadly, health equity for all. We envision Nanopath’s technology as the go-to platform for routine women’s health screening, allowing for clinically actionable diagnosis within a single office visit,” says Amogha Tadimety, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Nanopath. “With this funding, we’re looking to build our technical team and initiate commercial and clinical partnerships to bring our technology platform to market.”

The Series A funding was co-led by Norwest Venture Partners and the Medtech Convergence Fund, a SV Health Investors venture fund, with participation from Gingerbread Capital and Green D Ventures.

Nanopath’s co-founders are working to close two major gaps in the industry: the limited number of disruptive life science companies focused on women’s health and the limited number of women-led life science companies. Built on a core mission to address these critical disparities, Nanopath is developing technological breakthroughs designed to empower the patient and provider.

Nanopath seeks to address disparities in care for underserved populations, starting with women’s health, by introducing a novel approach to molecular diagnostic testing that harnesses advances in bioengineering and nanotechnology to accurately identify and characterize a variety of pathogens within minutes, compared to existing gold-standard diagnostics that take days to return results. The technology can simultaneously characterize multiple pathogens with one test, leading to faster, more precise diagnosis and treatment.

Nanopath’s proprietary biosensing technology utilizes ultrasensitive optical detection to identify DNAs and RNAs, without the need for nucleic acid amplification. This amplification-free approach minimizes reagents, lowers costs and reduces user steps that are ubiquitous across molecular diagnostics. Nanopath’s platform will require minimal training to operate, making high-complexity molecular diagnostics testing accessible at the point-of-care, the company says.

Nanopath’s technology has the potential to simultaneously test for multiple pathogens, based on presenting symptoms, and reduce delivery of test results from days to just 15 minutes. The company has generated strong pilot clinical data in its two lead indications through collaborations with leading hospital systems in New England.

“What we are building has the potential to holistically improve patient care by circumventing existing complex, expensive and time-consuming workflows, while simultaneously providing more granular health information,” says Alison Burklund, PhD, co-founder and CTO of Nanopath. “We started in the women’s health space because of the deep unmet need, and our desire as founders to bring a first-in-class diagnostic platform to a population that has been consistently overlooked. That said, our technology has the potential to be valuable in any situation where DNA or RNA detection is useful, including respiratory disease diagnosis, characterization of genetic risk factors, and even biosecurity surveillance and environmental monitoring.”

Both Crowe and Sandoski have joined Nanopath’s board in tandem with this funding round. In late July, the company was named winner of the 2022 AACC Disruptive Technology Award, which recognizes innovative testing technology solutions that improve patient care through diagnostic performance or access to high-quality testing.

“The women’s health diagnostics market is ready for a solution that not only provides better and more actionable information, but also integrates with existing and emerging care delivery models,” says Jeff Crowe, senior managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “The Nanopath platform can provide results with the same, if not better, accuracy than existing methods, within 15 minutes, and at lower cost. Nanopath is well positioned to improve diagnosis and care delivery across a range of healthcare settings.”

Nanopath was also a winner of the inaugural 2021 Ignite Golden Ticket, which honors companies that advance life sciences innovation by making the biotechnology industry more inclusive and equitable by directly supporting promising entrepreneurs.