Precision Therapeutics Inc. has raised $34 million in equity and options to further develop a test that helps identify an individual’s best chemotherapy options, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company’s ChemoFX drug marker tests multiple chemotherapies on a patient’s cancer cells before treatment to determine which drugs are likely to be most effective.
The $34 million fundraise isn’t Precision Therapeutics’ first big payday. In late 2008, the company secured $43 million in venture funding. That round included three Pittsburgh firms — Birchmere Ventures, Adams Capital Management and Draper Triangle Ventures — along with TVM Capital of Boston, Quaker BioVentures of Philadelphia and Longitude Venture Partners of Menlo Park, Calif.
Names from representatives of a number of those firms appeared on the regulatory filing, as did that of Boston-based Bain Capital’s Jeff Crisan. The fundraise came from 45 investors and its first sale happened on May 25, according to the filing.
In mid-2007, the company filed for an initial public offering, but canceled the plans due to weakness in the IPO market. Later that year, it planned a reverse merger with Oracle Healthcare Acquisition Corp., but that also didn’t happen. With those capital-raising options shut off, Precision Therapeutics looks to have settled on another venture round.
Last year, Precision Therapeutics was named the 64th fastest-growing, privately held healthcare company in the U.S. by Inc. Magazine.
A spokeswoman for the company said CEO Sean McDonald wasn’t available for comment. Before Precision Therapeutics, McDonald founded Automated Healthcare, which developed robotic medicine retrieval technology for hospitals and pharmacies. The company was sold to McKesson in 1996 for $65 million.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
