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Biotia, Pioneering Pathogen Detection Company, Raises an Oversubscribed $8M Series A

New York, NY -- August 23, 2022 -- Biotia, a company fighting infectious diseases powered by genomics and artificial intelligence (AI), has raised an oversubscribed $8 million Series A round led by OCA Ventures.  OCA, a veteran early stage venture firm operating from Chicago and Palo Alto was joined by other key investors including Continuum Health Ventures, Phoenix Venture Partners, SeedtoB Capital, SK Square Americas, Digital-Dx Ventures, and others. Prior Seed round investors include Falcon II Ventures, Tau Ventures, Hyperplane Venture Capital, Leawood Venture Capital, SpringTide Ventures, and others.

Launched from Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, and operating from their SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University-affiliated clinical (CLIA) lab at BioBAT in New York City, Biotia has built and launched numerous advanced infectious disease research and clinical products. These include a curated leading genomics database for pathogens to better enable pathogen detection and characterization, a sequencing-based assay to detect SARS-CoV-2 genetic variants, which recently received expanded FDA EUA, and clinical-grade metagenomics assays.

"Biotia has important qualities we seek out in portfolio companies including their deep knowledge in a cutting-edge technology that can address a growing problem, in this case infectious disease threats,” said Bob Saunders, Healthcare General Partner at OCA Ventures. “Their technology has the promise to provide critical insight and innovation to widely impact patient care and public health,” added Dr. Daniel Kraft of Continuum Health Ventures.

"We are excited to grow our diagnostic offerings as well as our capacity for global pathogen research and surveillance,” said Dr. Niamh O'Hara, CEO of Biotia. “This is another step driving  the growth of precision medicine in infectious diseases.”

At a key time in the global management of infectious diseases, with ongoing COVID-19 challenges and emerging threats, including monkeypox, Biotia through its software, data and lab assays provides clinicians, laboratories, and public health organizations advanced tools to    combat infectious diseases. “This Series A will rapidly accelerate expansion of our company’s teams, deployment of new technologies, and rollout of new algorithms and tools that are already helping physicians, researchers, and health systems,” said Dr. Chris Mason, Co-Founder and Global Director of Biotia.

The investment will be used to rapidly expand Biotia's technical capabilities, compliance, and marketing reach to organizations involved in the diagnosis, mitigation, and control of global infectious diseases.

About Biotia

Biotia is a health tech company located in New York, NY, that leverages sequencing-based technology and proprietary AI-powered software to rapidly and accurately identify microorganisms and antimicrobial resistance. Their mission is to fight infectious diseases by deploying the leading reference library of microbes worldwide. Biotia, a spinout company of Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, has a New York State CLIA lab for infectious disease diagnostics testing affiliated with SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.

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About OCA Ventures

OCA Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm based in Chicago focused on highly scalable technology and services businesses, with particular expertise in financial technologies, services and trading, security, data analytics, and healthcare technologies. OCA seeks to invest in revolutionary ideas and to partner with exceptional entrepreneurs, typically participating in a company’s first round of institutional capital. For more information, please visit www.ocaventures.com or Twitter @OCAVentures.