Noninvasive White Blood Cell Monitoring Startup Leuko Raises $1.8 Million Seed Round
Leuko, an MIT-born technology startup developing the first non-invasive white blood cell monitoring device, today announced it has raised $1.8 million in seed financing from Good Growth Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Nina Capital, and angel investors.
Leuko, an MIT-born technology startup developing the first non-invasive white blood cell monitoring device, today announced it has raised $1.8 million in seed financing from Good Growth Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Nina Capital, and angel investors.
Founded by four MIT scientists and entrepreneurs, two of whom are also alumni of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Leuko is developing PointCheck™, the company’s proprietary device to measure white blood cell levels non-invasively, which can enable improved clinical outcomes and reduced costs for immunosuppressed patients. The device takes its measurements from a patient’s finger without drawing blood.
Patients need a way to monitor how they are reacting to treatments, daily and non-invasively from the comfort of their homes, and physicians need this insight to more precisely adjust treatments. If physicians are alerted when a patient's white blood cells drop to dangerously-low levels, preventive treatment could be deployed to avoid life-threatening infections, improve clinical outcomes, and reduce hospitalization costs. “Our vision is that patients will have a PointCheck™ portable device that they can take home to do just that,” said Carlos Castro-Gonzalez, Leuko’s CEO and co-founder. "The new investment supports ongoing development and clinical studies of our platform technology, to ultimately turn this vision into reality.”
Good Growth Capital (GGC), a venture capital fund based between Boston and Charleston and focused on early stage technology companies, has led the investment.
“In the short time since GGC’s first investment, Leuko has made significant progress in developing a platform that is demonstrably faster, more efficient and more scalable than traditional methods,” said Amy Salzhauer, managing partner at GGC. “We’re excited to invest in Leuko and help accelerate their path to market as they aim to transform the care of immunosuppressed patients by dramatically improving the efficiency of cell testing.”
About Leuko
Leuko is a startup spun out from MIT and the Madrid M+Vision Consortium. They are developing a platform technology to noninvasively measure blood parameters. The scalable PointCheck™ solution combines optics and AI to make blood testing easier, faster, more accessible, and cost-effective than the state-of-the art solutions. In 2017, Carlos Castro-Gonzalez, Aurelien Bourquard, Ian Butterworth and Alvaro Sanchez-Ferro co-founded Leuko. Together they co-invented Leuko’s proprietary PointCheck™ technology for non-invasive white blood cell monitoring.
About Good Growth Capital
Good Growth Capital (GGC) is an early stage venture capital firm based in Boston and Charleston. It is majority women-owned and managed, focused on finding and collaborating with transformative technology-based startups. Good Growth Capital launched its first general fund in 2017; opened The Infinite Corridor Fund for MIT-affiliated Pre-seed and Seed deals in 2018; and opened the GGC General Fund II in 2019 for Seed and Series A stages.
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