- DotLab, a female-founded personalized medicine company for women’s health announced that it recently secured $10 million in Series A
DotLab, a female-founded personalized medicine company for women’s health, announced recently that it secured $10 million in Series A funding led by CooperSurgical — which is a business unit of The Cooper Companies. This round of funding also included participation from Tiger Global Management and Luxor Capital Group as well as the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
And DotLab combined its novel biomarkers with machine learning to pioneer the development of its non-invasive and accurate diagnostic test for endometriosis. Today’s clinical standard for endometriosis, laparoscopic surgery under general anesthesia, has not evolved in the last one hundred years. And modalities like medical imaging are not effective at diagnosing endometriosis.
Endometriosis — a chronic disease with an unknown exact prevalence — is estimated to impact 10% of women worldwide and up to 50% in women with infertility. A large percentage of women remain undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. And those who do eventually receive a diagnosis endure an average delay to diagnosis of 10 years and change doctors a median of 5 times in the process.
Due to endometriosis, patients may experience significant impacts on long-term social and professional development. And pelvic pain symptoms may occur as early as patients’ first menstrual cycles causing young adolescents to miss days of school. In many other cases, women experience no disease symptoms until they discover that they are unable to conceive.
“More than half of unexplained infertility is due to endometriosis. If the disease is diagnosed and treated prior to IVF, women will have a higher likelihood of getting pregnant,” said Dr. Hugh Taylor — the Chair of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale School of Medicine and Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
DotLab has partnered with researchers at Yale University to evaluate the performance of the test relative to laparoscopy in patients with and without endometriosis across multiple clinical cohorts.
“The revolutionary technology behind DotLab’s endometriosis test could improve the lives of the hundreds of millions of women affected by this debilitating disease which has been under-researched and deprioritized for too long,” added DotLab CEO Heather Bowerman.
Bowerman also pointed out that CooperSurgical brings significant operational resources and the opportunity to build upon partnerships with health systems for becoming a leading brand in women’s health. And DotLab is planning to use the Series A funding to further clinical validation, expand market access, and continue growing the team.
