TARA Biosystems Raises $9 Million Series A Financing

NEW YORK, October 16, 2017 (Newswire.com) - TARA Biosystems, Inc., a company developing physiologically relevant “heart-on-a-chip” tissue models for drug discovery, toxicology and translational medicine applications, announced today that it closed on a $9 million Series A financing.

TARA Biosystems offers testing services on its human stem cell-derived cardiac tissue platform. The company’s platform, which is based on its proprietary Biowire™ technology, enables discovery efforts for novel heart medicines via its disease modeling and phenotypic screening capabilities. TARA can also utilize its precision cardiology efforts to help successfully translate research efforts to the clinic.

The team has invested considerable effort digging deep into customer needs and, in parallel on the technical front, has generated a significant dataset, supporting a unique and compelling value proposition for the cardiovascular R&D community. We've been further impressed with TARA's ability to translate these efforts into early traction with big pharma in cardiac toxicology.

Craig Asher, Managing Partner, Trancos Ventures

Series A Proceeds Will Fuel 2018 Product Launch and New Product Development

Proceeds from the $9M Series A financing will fuel the launch of TARA’s first products in 2018 and accelerate the development of TARA’s growing portfolio of healthy cardiac tissues, cardiac disease models as well as a range of acute and chronic testing service products.

The Series A round was co-led by Trancos Ventures and Morgan Noble. “The team has invested considerable effort digging deep into customer needs and, in parallel on the technical front, has generated a significant dataset, supporting a unique and compelling value proposition for the cardiovascular R&D community,” said Craig Asher, the managing partner for Trancos Ventures. “We’ve been further impressed with TARA’s ability to translate these efforts into early traction with big pharma in cardiac toxicology.” The NYS Innovation Venture Capital Fund administered by Empire State Development joined the round, which also included TARA’s existing investors, Alexandria Venture Investments, the strategic venture capital arm of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc., 180 Degree Capital Corp. (f/k/a Harris & Harris Group, Inc.), Empire State Development's Innovate NY Fund and the Partnership Fund for New York City.

“TARA is extremely fortunate to be working with this group of highly successful and experienced life science technology investors,” said Misti Ushio, CEO of TARA Biosystems. “This financing will propel the launch of our cardiac analysis solutions based on our Biowire™ technology platform.”

About TARA Biosystems

TARA Biosystems, Inc. provides predictive, in vitro human cardiac tissue models for use in drug discovery, safety assessment and translational medicine. TARA Biosystems offers a high-fidelity solution that is based on human stem cell-derived cardiac tissue matured to physiologically relevant adult-like levels and provides direct measures of cardiac functionality, including contractile force. TARA is dedicated to pioneering predictive cardiac tissue models that enable the faster, safer, and more reliable development of new medicines. Safer and more effective new medicines that rapidly make it to market means better health and longer lives, and we believe that benefits people everywhere. 

Press Contact: 
Misti Ushio
917-686-7096 
[email protected]

Source: TARA Biosystems, Inc.