Dive Brief:
- With ViroCyt's Virus Counter, a lab-based technology that allows scientists to determine the amount of virus particles in a sample, researchers can get results in a matter of minutes, compared with days or weeks using traditional approaches.
- Since 2012, ViroCyt has raised a total of $11.7 million for the tech, including the $3.5 million that it just raised.
- Last summer, researchers from the Filovirus Animal Nonclinical Group (FANG) successfully used the Virus Counter to determine the amount of a virus in an Ebola sample, which helped this group speed up its work.
Dive Insight:
Vaccine development has taken center stage in the world of pharma R&D simply because of the role that it is playing in addressing the scourge of the Ebola virus. Technology like ViroCyt's Virus Counter plays an important role in moving the development process forward.
ViroCyt is a spin-off from another Boulder, Colorado-based company, DevR, which focused on developing new instruments, arrays, and assays that can be used for genotyping and developing vaccines. DevR will continue its work, while ViroCyt focuses on commercialization of the Virus Counter.