What You Should Know:
– Pleno, Inc, a multi-omic instrument platform company revolutionizing biological target detection for clinical testing and biomedical research raises $40M in Series A funding led by Deerfield Management and Foresite Capital.
– The funding will accelerate the development of Pleno’s Hypercoding™ instrument platform, called RAPTOR ™, which is slated for early customer access in 2023 and full availability in 2024. Release below and here.
The World’s First Hypercoding Instrument Platform
Pleno was founded by Pieter van Rooyen, a well-known biotech engineer who built and sold his last company, Edico Genome, to Illumina for $100 million. Edico’s Dragen technology has become a staple in genetics research. Biotech legend Greg Lucier is chairman of the board.
Pleno has developed a unique enabling technology called Hypercoding™, which leverages signal processing techniques derived from the telecom industry to deliver ultra-high plexity targeted biological information – including DNA, RNA, methylation, and proteomic content – at unprecedented scale, precision, and performance. The newly raised funds will support the development of Pleno’s Hypercoding™ instrument platform, capable of detecting up to 10,000 targets per sample and processing up to 10,000 samples per day, via a simple, low-cost workflow. This is equivalent to 1,000 times the target multiplexing of polymerase chain reaction technology (PCR) and 100 times the sample throughput of next-generation sequencing (NGS).
Pleno is based in San Diego’s Sorrento Mesa innovation hub proximate to a robust talent pool of experienced scientists, telecommunication engineers, and biotechnology innovators. The company currently employs 24 full-time employees and plans to continue to grow its team rapidly in the coming months.
