Glyconics secures £1.5m for diabetes screening tool

Based in the UK with offices in Cambridge, Norwich and Basingstoke, the start-up raised well over its intended £850k in an Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) funding round ahead of a Series A round next year.

The World Health Organisation projects diabetes to be the seventh leading cause of death by 2030. Early detection is key to long-term management of the condition and increased life expectancy. 

Screening currently depends on blood or urine tests which require plastic disposables with related processing, logistics and costly resources. Current methods can also produce false positives or fail to detect the disease.

Described by Glyconics as a ‘game-changing’ point-of-care diabetes tool, Glyconics-SX uses miniaturised infrared spectrometry for the early diagnosis of diabetes by detecting biomarker changes in a patient’s fingernail within seconds, and without the need for single use plastics.

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“Glyconics offers a transformational, cost-efficient, rapid and non-invasive approach to diabetes screening — and it is testament to this pioneering device and all at Team Glyconics that this raise was so significantly over-subscribed,” Glyconics CEO Dr Kam Pooni said in a statement.

The raise was led by Wealth Club and existing investors Deepbridge Capital and Boundary Capital. Demand from Wealth Club private investors and angel investors pushed the total amount to £1.5m.

News of the oversubscribed round follows the company's appointment of diabetes expert Dr Päivi Paldánius as its first Chief Medical Officer (CMO), as the team prepares to progress to the next clinical phase.

Following the trial programme, Glyconics will apply for regulatory approval and CE marking, described by Deepbridge Capital partner and head of life sciences Savvas Neophytou as ‘the next milestone event’ towards commercialisation.