Delve Bio – a pioneer in metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) for infectious diseases – recently announced that it debuted with $35 million in Series A financing led by Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Fund II (PXV Fund II) and joined by Section 32 and GV. The funding round will be used to commercialize the company’s mNGS-based infectious disease test – which was developed by world-renowned infectious disease experts at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Center for Next-Gen Precision Diagnostics – and advance a pipeline of next-generation tests.
The company was founded by Drs. Charles Chiu, Joe DeRisi, Michael Wilson, Pardis Sabeti, and Matthew Meyerson – who are leaders in genomics, metagenomics, and infectious disease.
Delve’s leadership team is complemented by its board of directors – which brings together former Foundation Medicine chairman and CEO Michael Pellini’s extensive experience in the commercialization of molecular diagnostics, and the neuroinflammatory disease expertise of Michael Wilson, director of the UCSF Center for Encephalitis and Meningitis.
The long-standing paradigm for diagnosing many infections often depends on testing for a limited subset of suspected pathogens – often leading to long hospital stays, increasing unnecessary testing and procedures, and, in the worst-case scenario, inappropriate treatment.
Delve’s mNGS diagnostic platform reviews all nucleic acids in a single patient sample using next-generation sequencing to detect bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses simultaneously in a hypothesis-free manner. And this data is then processed through Delve’s proprietary computational pipeline, rapidly analyzing hundreds of millions of sequences to accurately identify the pathogen responsible for the infectious disease.
Delve Bio was started in connection with UCSF through its engagement and opportunity development team in Innovation Ventures’ Office of Technology Management and Advancement (OTMA) – which leads licensing, startup, and business development efforts on behalf of the university. And the company holds an exclusive in-license from UCSF for the development and commercialization of its mNGS diagnostic platform, including its clinically validated mNGS test for cerebrospinal fluid that has been widely used by clinicians to solve complex cases of meningitis and encephalitis.
KEY QUOTES:
“While genomic testing has been transformative for oncology, rare disease, and women’s health, infectious disease has been largely overlooked. We formed Delve Bio with the vision of bringing infectious disease diagnostics into the genomics era, enabling patients with complex – and often life-threatening – infections, which cannot be routinely diagnosed, to get a definitive diagnosis.”
— Brad Murray, co-founder and CEO of Delve
“We firmly believe that mNGS delivers the most conclusive, unbiased and actionable diagnosis of infectious disease. Delve brings infectious disease diagnostics and the latest innovations in metagenomics together to deliver on the promise to dramatically improve the precision and range of infectious disease diagnosis, discovery and management – including the integration of host response, antimicrobial resistance detection and more.”
— Joe DeRisi, Ph.D., Delve Bio co-founder, professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF, and president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub
“The academic caliber of Delve Bio’s founders, coupled with the management team’s track record of success, makes me confident about the company’s future.”
— Chris Garabedian, portfolio manager, PXV Fund II
