Friday, July 18, 2008

PointCare targets HIV in Africa

By Ryan McBride

While health clinics in Africa and the Caribbean struggle to care for millions of AIDS patients, a diagnostics startup based in Marlborough has jumped into the thick of this crisis with its portable blood analyzer to monitor the health of HIV/AIDS patients. 

PointCare Technologies Inc. executives have been in Africa for the past several weeks to market its diagnostic analyzer and train a newly raised sales force. More than two thirds of the people living with HIV or AIDS reside in Africa, making the continent the largest market for the Massachusetts firm’s products.  
 
Brook Venture Partners, a Wakefield venture firm that led a $3.6 million Series C round of financing for PointCare this spring, learned while considering its investment that PointCare offers both a sound venture opportunity and a chance to fight the worldwide AIDS epidemic, Brook partner Frederick Morris said. 

“It has to be a venture deal,” Morris said. “But on top of that, if you feel like you’re having a positive impact, it’s a great feeling.”

PointCare’s diagnostic device, called the PointCareNOW, measures the concentration of immune or T cells that patients have in their blood, with what are called “CD4 tests.” The company says it takes eight minutes for the analyzer to render results of the tests, which guide physicians in the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.

The rugged device is designed to operate in rural areas, using test materials that don’t require refrigeration, as competitors’ reagents do, company officials say. Still, the firm faces mammoth competition in the market for CD4 testing from diagnostics giant Becton, Dickinson and Co., based in New Jersey.

Founded in 2002, PointCare is led by wife-and-husband team Petra Krauledat, the company’s CEO, and W. Peter Hansen, who led the development of the firm’s technology and serves as chief scientific officer. In an e-mail from Africa, Krauledat wrote that the company sold five PointCareNOW machines at a health-care conference in South Africa two weeks ago.

Prior to PointCare, Krauledat and Hansen were part of the executive team that founded and led Somerville research instruments startup Union Biometrica Inc., which was acquired by Harvard Bioscience Inc. (Nasdaq: HBIO), a Holliston research tools company, for $17.5 million in 2001. It’s no coincidence that Brook Venture also backed Union Biometrica, Morris said.

PointCare has raised more than $7.5 million in total venture capital.