Deep Lens, an AI-driven digital pathology company, has secured $14m in Series A financing round, led by Northpond Ventures, to further advance digital artificial intelligence (AI) pathology platform for clinical trial recruitment.
Image: Deep Lens will use the funding to further expand its AI and platform product development activities. Photo: Courtesy of Gerd Altmann/Pixabay.
Deep Lens said that the latest financing follows the VC-led seed equity round it has closed just three months ago and the existing investors Rev1 Ventures, Sierra Ventures, and Tamarind-Hill Partners have also participated in this round, making the total funding $17.5m till date.
Deep Lens will use the funding to further expand its AI and platform product development activities and scale its service, sales, and marketing organizations to support current and future demand and growth for clinical trial recruitment.
Deep Lens co-founder and CEO Dave Billiter said: “Since our inception, we’ve benefitted from a tremendous group of investors, which now includes the world class team at Northpond Ventures.
“This Series A financing is further validation of the value of our industry-changing approach to digital pathology in delivering the right cancer diagnoses faster and accelerating oncology trial recruitment and timelines.”
Deep Lens has developed a technology called VIPER, Virtual Imaging for Pathology Education and Research, for research purposes in Columbus, Ohio.
The technology has been the de-facto platform for global oncology studies including The Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA) and others, before being commercialized by Deep Lens.
The company said that the VIPER is capable of combining AI with advanced pathology workflows and simultaneously facilitating peer-to-peer collaboration and patient identification for clinical trials.
The technology is aimed at providing fast and accurate information to the users, along with expert consultation for better patient care and advanced clinical research.
Deep Lens said that patient recruitment for clinical trials is time-intensive and costly barrier to the execution of drug development programs and more than 14,000 oncology clinical trials are actively recruiting patients, where the rate of participation estimated as low as 3% of potential trial candidates.
Furthermore, its VIPER platform facilitates the pathologists in clinical trial recruitment to identify eligible patients at the time of their diagnosis, VIPER can help fast-track trial enrollment and potentially shorten the duration of the trial.
Northpond founder and CEO Michael Rubin said: “Northpond is excited to support Deep Lens. The VIPER platform and its unique distribution is a novel approach to the problem of patient recruitment in clinical trials. We are proud to begin working with the current investors to help Deep Lens accomplish their clinical and commercial goals.”