Alamar Biosciences Completes $80M Series B Fundraising to Bring Unprecedented Performance to the Proteomics Market

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Sep 08, 2021, 08:35 ET

FREMONT, Calif., Sept. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alamar Biosciences, Inc., a precision proteomics company that brings both ultra-high sensitivity and massively parallel scale to proteomic analysis, announced today that it has closed its $80 million Series B financing round, bringing its total funding to $110 million. The Series B financing round was led by Sherpa Healthcare Partners and included Morningside Ventures, Samsara Biocapital, and existing investors Qiming Venture Partners and Illumina Ventures.

This oversubscribed round of investment will accelerate the development of Alamar's proprietary proteomics platform, which will be the most sensitive, highly multiplexed, and high dynamic range solution for life science research, pharmaceutical development, and diagnostics such as liquid biopsy. The platform leverages Next Generation Sequencing to bring the power of genomics to proteomics, enabling the early detection of cancer and other diseases.

"We are very pleased to have these top-tier investors supporting our next phase of development. They bring tremendous amount of expertise in life sciences and diagnostics, which will be extremely valuable to us as we build the company," said Dr. Yuling Luo, Founder, Chairman and CEO. "Despite recent progress in the field, there is still no technology that unites two essential goals in proteomics analysis, namely the ability to go as deeply as possible to detect very low abundance proteins and the ability to profile thousands of proteins in a single sample. This capability will be critical for the discovery and measurement of many proteins in human plasma that are currently undetectable. Alamar's NULISA and Attobody platforms will help fill this void and will drive a new wave of innovations in research, diagnostics, and therapeutics."

Alamar Biosciences was founded by Dr. Luo, a technologist and serial entrepreneur who previously founded Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ACD), now a part of Bio-Techne, and led it as President and CEO. At ACD he pioneered the field of spatial genomics together with Dr. Xiao-Jun Ma by inventing and successfully commercializing RNAscope, the world's most sensitive RNA in situ detection technology. Recognizing a similar critical need for ultra-sensitive protein detection technology in proteomics, Dr. Luo started Alamar Biosciences with Dr. Steve Chen, who was also a co-founder of ACD, and Dr. Yiyuan Yin, a structural biologist with extensive antibody engineering expertise.

The Alamar Biosciences team has applied their insights gained from developing single-molecule detection technologies and antibody engineering to create two technology platforms – NULISA^™ and Attobody^™. The combination of these ground-breaking platforms provides the unique ability to detect extremely low levels of protein biomarkers in human blood plasma, and to do so in a high-plex format allowing for the measurement of thousands of protein targets in a single assay, leading to a new generation of noninvasive precision diagnostics.

"Alamar has made great strides in developing its novel technologies. This financing will position Alamar to complete the development of its platform and will help position the company for its commercial launch," said Nick Naclerio, Founding Partner of Illumina Ventures.

"We are thrilled to partner with the Alamar team to fully develop their game-changing platform and provide researchers around the globe with the tools they need to unlock the full potential of proteomics," commented Darren Cai, Founder and Managing Partner of Sherpa Healthcare Partners.

"We are pleased to continue our support of Alamar, which has made excellent progresses in the past two years. With three potential lines of business - research instruments and reagents, diagnostics, and antibody therapeutics - we believe the company is well-positioned to make a significant impact on the future of healthcare," said Amy Tang, Venture Partner of the company's Series A lead investor, Qiming Venture Partners.

About Alamar Biosciences

Alamar Biosciences is a privately held life sciences company with a mission to transform the field of proteomics to enable the early detection of cancer and other diseases. The company's two proprietary technology platforms, NULISA™ and Attobody™, work seamlessly with the latest advances in genomics to achieve single-digit attomolar detection sensitivity, greatly surpassing the most sensitive protein detection technology on the market today. The Attobodies have picomolar affinity and built-in high specificity and have the potential to expand antibody therapeutics to many targets intractable with conventional antibodies. For more information, please visit www.alamarbio.com.

SOURCE Alamar Biosciences, Inc.