John Santini, President and CEO of Vergent Bioscience

Tiny Ver­gent seals mod­est Se­ries B in pur­suit of can­cer imag­ing agent

A biotech with on­ly two full-time em­ploy­ees now has mil­lions of more dol­lars to spend in its work on an imag­ing mol­e­cule.

Based out of Min­neapo­lis, MN, Ver­gent Bio­science an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing that in­vestors hand­ed the com­pa­ny $21.5 mil­lion via a Se­ries B round. The last time the com­pa­ny got fund­ing was in 2018, thanks to a Se­ries A worth $8.7 mil­lion.

The biotech’s em­pha­sis is in a mol­e­cule called VGT-309, a flu­o­res­cent imag­ing agent that would al­low sur­geons to more quick­ly find sol­id tu­mors in pa­tients dur­ing surgery. The biotech had orig­i­nal­ly in-li­censed the mol­e­cule from Stan­ford. CEO and pres­i­dent John San­ti­ni tells End­points News that ini­tial­ly, Ver­gent was look­ing at dyes for non-hu­man use on­ly, for R&D ap­pli­ca­tions.

Endpoints News

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