On August 18th 2021 in Orem, Utah, Techcyte Inc. closed a $21 million funding round to accelerate the commercialization of its digital clinical pathology platform. The investors in this round include Zoetis, ARUP Laboratories and investors from previous rounds.
Ben Cahoon, the CEO of Techcyte, said, “Our relationship with Zoetis has been incredible as we’ve revolutionized diagnostics for veterinary clinics. That success has led to a robust digital diagnostics platform that is being leveraged by human hospitals and reference labs to expand and improve their digital clinical pathology platforms.”
“Nearly one year ago, Zoetis transformed point-of-care diagnostic testing for companion animals with its Vetscan Imagyst platform, which is based on Techcyte’s image recognition and cloud-based AI algorithms. Today we are excited to lead this funding round and look forward to co-developing with Techcyte further AI-based veterinary applications that have potential for the human health market,” said Abhay Nayak, Executive Vice President and Head of Strategy, Accelerated Growth Businesses and Commercial Development at Zoetis. He added that while Zoetis’s Vetscan Imagyst system initially launched with fecal testing, the technology will ultimately evolve to additional pathological capabilities at the point of care.
Proceeds from the round and revenue from its veterinary business will allow Techcyte to continue to grow its veterinary business and accelerate commercialization in the human market, completing multiple FDA 510ks and expanding the development team to further work with valued partners such as ARUP Laboratories.
“As the digital pathology market matures, it is becoming clear that human labs have opportunities to enhance both clinical and anatomic pathology workflow through the use of specialized technologies”, said Rick Smith, President of Techcyte. “The Techcyte platform is robust and provides solutions for hematology, cervical cytology, FNAs, bacteriology and parasitology.”
Techcyte’s clinical pathology platform is a complete solution for digital slide management and image analysis, including a slide viewer, lab workflow and integration with whole slide scanners and lab information systems. It is HIPAA compliant and received the CE mark in 2020. An FDA clinical validation study is close to completion and will be submitted to the FDA by the end of the year.