Thursday, January 5, 2012

CIA's In-Q-Tel makes strategic investment in Quanterix

By Rodney H. Brown

Quanterix Corp. has taken a strategic investment for an undisclosed amount from In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, to help expand development of its technology to detect pathogens.

The Cambridge-based company is developing its Single Molecule Array technology, which looks at nucleic acids and proteins to quickly and inexpensively identify pathogens. Traditional markets for the Quanterix technology have been the life sciences and in vitro diagnostics markets, but chairman and CEO Martin Madaus said that the strategic partnership will help the company develop “novel applications that address the needs of the Intelligence Community,” presumably including the detection of biological weapons.

Founded in 2007, privately held Quanterix is backed by investors including ARCH Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures and Flagship Ventures. Not counting the new funding from In-Q-Tel, Quanterix has raised $26 million in two rounds of financing.

In September, Madaus, the former CEO of Millipore Corp., was named permanent CEO at Quanterix. Madaus had been serving as acting CEO at Quanterix since June and had been serving as chairman since October 2010.

Last month, Quanterix won another government deal – a contract from the Department of Homeland Security to develop a test for the botulinum toxin that would be sensitive enough to find a single molecule in a sample.