En Carta Diagnostics has secured €1.5M ($1.63M) in pre-seed funding to advance its prototype diagnostic kit for Lyme disease, generate preclinical data, and scale operations. The round was led by CentraleSupélec Venture with participation from prominent business angels.
En Carta’s rapid point-of-care diagnostic platform, developed over ten years, uses aptamers, short, single-stranded DNA or RNA (ssDNA or ssRNA) molecules capable of binding with high affinity and specificity to a predetermined target. The company says that by freeze-drying their sensors in any porous material, they can store and ship accessible diagnostics anywhere, eliminating the need for a cold chain.
The initial focus is on Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne disease in the Northern Hemisphere, with 1.2 million cases annually and a 22.5% annual increase from 2000 to 2018, according to the CDC, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The funds will support the development of a Lyme disease diagnostic kit that provides results in minutes and the implementation of a commercialization strategy. En Carta aims to present preclinical data by early 2025, offering a faster alternative to current antibody-based tests that can miss early infections. As antibodies can take several weeks to develop, tests performed on recently infected patients can produce a negative result.
- En Carta, Paris, France
- CentraleSupélec Venture, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
