Investor relations
One disclosed round, one investor, and the investment case in the company’s own words.
Investor relations
The 2012 financing
GeneAssess’ first disclosed financing was $500,000 from Foundation Venture Capital Group, reported on 4 July 2012. Foundation Venture Capital Group is a venture firm that invests in start-ups run by faculty at or affiliated with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey — which is to say, it was set up for exactly the kind of university spin-out GeneAssess was.
The investment case, as the investor put it at the time, was that the FRY gene it had identified appears in breast cancer but also shows potential for other cancers.
The counterparties
Who invested, and who hosted the research
$500,000, 2012
Foundation Venture Capital Group
A venture firm that invests in start-ups run by faculty at or affiliated with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. It invested $500,000 in GeneAssess in 2012.
- James Golubieski, president: invested because the FRY gene appears in breast cancer and shows potential for other cancers
- George F. Heinrich, chief executive: “We see great promise in Dr. Zarbl’s discovery of the FRY gene and how it might be used to affect the diagnosis and treatment of aggressive breast cancers.”
University partnership
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
The academic home of the founder and of the research programme. Dr. Zarbl joined Rutgers in 2007 and has led the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and the NIEHS-funded Center for Environmental Exposures and Disease.
- Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine
- Rutgers School of Public Health, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
- Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey
The investment case, in the company’s words
Susceptibility, progression, grading
Susceptibility tests
Cancer gene-based tests for who is more susceptible, built on a gene that emerged from a susceptibility screen in the first place.
Progression
A marker whose fall correlates with histological progression, loss of hormone receptors and, in some cases, metastasis.
Tumour grading and therapy
Correlation with Elston grade — and, in the founder’s words, a route to targeted drugs for aggressive and advanced breast cancer.