UK-based Myconostica to open U.S. headquarters in South Carolina

Myconostica, a Manchester, United Kingdom-based medical diagnostic company specializing in rapid and highly specific tests for life-threatening fungal infections, will locate its U.S. headquarters here after closing a $7.7 million oversubscribed C round of financing from a number of international private equity investors.

Nexus Medical Partners (Boston and Charleston) led the round, with Innoven Partenaires (France), the principal international investors, joining existing investor Amphion Innovations (AIM: AMP-L) in the round.

The Charleston office, Myconostica’s first outside of the UK, will be the focus for North American operations and was chosen after careful review of alternative locations, according to the company.

South Carolina has a growing cluster of medtech and biotech industry.

The location of Myconostica’s U.S. office is being facilitated by The Charleston Digital Corridor’s Life Science Initiative (of which Nexus is a supporter) is facilitating expansion.

Nexus is one of the four venture capital firms to receive state sponsored funding under the South Carolina Venture Capital Investment Act.

The capital raised in this round of financing will also support the launch of Myconostica’s first two products. The first product is the world’s first real-time molecular diagnostic simultaneously testing for both Aspergillus and Pneumocystis.

The second product is a fungal DNA extraction system.

More than 10 million people are at risk of invasive fungal infections in Europe and North America each year. This number is increasing rapidly with the large growth in patients, whose treatments involve transplants and/or the use of immunosuppressive drugs, leaving them susceptible to fungal infection.

The company said current diagnostic methods are too slow and non-specific for optimal patient care.

Myconostica which was formed in 2006 as a spin out from the University of Manchester, is developing and commercializing tests based on highly specific genetic “signatures” unique to each disease and allow faster and much more precise diagnosis. These molecular diagnostics are simple and can detect multiple fungi in a single process.