BioCentury
ARTICLE | Financial News

Crescendo raises $28M in D round

January 4, 2013 12:51 AM UTC

Molecular diagnostics company Crescendo Bioscience Inc. (South San Francisco, Calif.) raised $28 million in a series D round led by new investors Skyline Ventures and Safeguard Scientifics Inc. (NYSE:SFE). Existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures; Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; and Aeris Capital also participated. Crescendo said the funding will allow it to "accelerate its commercialization efforts" for Vectra DA, a multi-biomarker blood test that Crescendo launched in 2010 to quantify rheumatoid arthritis activity. The test combines information from 12 serum biomarkers that have been shown to be associated with RA disease activity into a single quantitative score.

Crescendo is a member of the Biomarkers of Anti-TNF Treatment Efficacy in Rheumatoid Arthritis-Unresponsive Populations (BATTER-UP) Consortium, an academic-industry consortium focused on improving care for RA. The consortium is working to validate an eight-gene biomarker panel to predict differential response to treatment with TNF alpha inhibitors (see BioCentury, Dec. 5, 2011). ...