The biotech com­pany oncg­nos­tics GmbH (www.oncgnostics.com), provider of the cer­vi­cal can­cer test “Gyn­Tect”, ends its crowd­in­vest­ing cam­paign on Seed­match very suc­cess­fully. Even before the end of the invest­ment period of 60 days, the fund­ing tar­get of 500,000 euros was reached at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2016. The result is pos­i­tive in another respect, as beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH (bm|t) increases its invest­ment with an invest­ment of the same amount. oncg­nos­tics will receive a total of one mil­lion euros for fur­ther research, devel­op­ment and inter­na­tional sales expan­sion after the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of the campaign.
For its cer­vi­cal can­cer test Gyn­Tect, the com­pany oncg­nos­tics launched a crowd­in­vest­ing cam­paign on the Seed­match plat­form (www.seedmatch.com/oncgnostics) last sum­mer. The fund­ing thresh­old of 100,000 euros was already exceeded within the first twelve hours of the cam­paign launch, and on 26 Sep­tem­ber the fund­ing tar­get was reached at 500,000 euros.
“We are very pleased that we were able to con­vince so many peo­ple about Gyn­Tect,” says Dr Alfred Hansel, CEO of oncg­nos­tics. “Such a test meets the need of women and doc­tors for quick cer­tainty, because many have a friend in their cir­cle of acquain­tances who has already expe­ri­enced such a sit­u­a­tion and there­fore know how stress­ful such a time is.”
Gyn­Tect can quickly and reli­ably clar­ify whether a patient actu­ally has or has cer­vi­cal can­cer that needs to be treated. This makes risk assess­ment dur­ing cer­vi­cal can­cer screen­ing much eas­ier: Unnec­es­sary, pre­ma­ture oper­a­tions can be avoided and the chances of early, suc­cess­ful treat­ment mea­sures can be increased.

Bet­ter med­ical care and increas­ing demand
Due to bet­ter access to med­ical care and the steadily increas­ing edu­ca­tion in screen­ing options, women are becom­ing more inter­ested in tests like Gyn­Tect. They are relieved of the fears caused by unclear find­ings from the cur­rent early detec­tion of cer­vi­cal can­cer, and in return are guar­an­teed quick cer­tainty and some­times even spared unnec­es­sary operations.
This poten­tial is not only seen by the 429 Seed­match investors, but also by the ven­ture cap­i­tal com­pany beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH (bm|t), which had already announced at the start of the cam­paign that it wanted to invest the same amount as the crowd. bm|t (www.bm‑t.de) has been a share­holder and financ­ing part­ner in oncg­nos­tics since the end of 2014.
“oncg­nos­tics oper­ates in a mar­ket with a high, con­stantly grow­ing demand for inno­v­a­tive diag­nos­tics: Gyn­Tect has a high mar­ket poten­tial in the bil­lion euro range. In addi­tion, fur­ther research in related areas will expand the can­cer test port­fo­lio. There­fore, we invest in the Thuringian com­pany with great con­fi­dence,” says Udo Werner, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of bm|t.
In total, oncg­nos­tics will thus receive an invest­ment of one mil­lion euros. Among other things, the money will be used for two clin­i­cal studies.

Future developments

The detec­tion of spe­cific epi­ge­netic mark­ers is not lim­ited to appli­ca­tions in cer­vi­cal can­cer diag­nos­tics. oncg­nos­tics is also work­ing with clin­i­cal part­ners to develop tests for other can­cers. For exam­ple, oncg­nos­tics is work­ing on the val­i­da­tion of mark­ers for head and neck tumours in a coop­er­a­tion with the ENT clinic of the Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal Jena. In addi­tion, oncg­nos­tics would like to improve the early detec­tion of ovar­ian can­cer as well. “Unfor­tu­nately, the screen­ing meth­ods for ovar­ian can­cer are cur­rently hardly sat­is­fac­tory. Although there are a few iso­lated mark­ers that are used for this pur­pose, they have no real ben­e­fit because they can only be found in acute cases when it is often already too late,” says Dr Mar­tina Schmitz, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and Head of Lab­o­ra­tory at oncgnostics.