PROMISS Diagnostics, Inc., a Milwaukee-based company developing an early-detection ovarian cancer test, has raised $400,000 in a seed round of funding, the company announced Friday.
The funding round was led by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation with additional investments from Cream City Venture Capital, Northwestern Mutual’s $5 million venture fund.
PROMISS Diagnostics is a venture-stage biotech company that develops bio-analytical solutions to assist physicians in improving women’s health outcomes. PROMISS Diagnostics president and chief executive office Jalal Sulaiman founded the company in 2017.
Its first-generation multi-analyte blood test (named PROMISS, for “Predicting Risk of Ovarian Malignancy in Serum Samples”) distinguishes malignant from benign ovarian masses.
The seed round will enable the company to develop and optimize the PROMISS technology as a predictive ovarian cancer diagnostic tool.
“This funding will allow us to make big strides in developing the PROMISS test and move us closer to the market where it will significantly improve cancer diagnosis,” Sulaiman said.
PROMISS is a proprietary machine learning algorithm that uses common serum biomarkers and patient data to diagnose ovarian cancer in women with a pelvic mass. The algorithm inputs are readily available, which means PROMISS is potentially a low-cost, highly accurate, point-of-care diagnostic tool that could be especially useful in low resource areas like rural American, where ovarian cancer mortality is the highest, according to a press release.
“PROMISS Diagnostics seeks to radically transform this paradigm with its innovative technology,” Sulaiman said. “We are passionate about improving patient outcomes by developing innovative tools that are efficacious, inexpensive and accessible.”