The newly-founded Oxford cardiovascular imaging spinout raised seed funding from backers including Oxford Sciences Innovation to pursue further product development.
Caristo Diagnostics, a UK-based cardiovascular imaging software spinout from University of Oxford, launched publicly yesterday with £2m ($2.6m) of seed money from investors including Oxford Sciences Innovation, the university’s venturing fund.
The round also featured Oxford Technology Investment Fund and venture capital firm Longwall Ventures.
Founded in June 2018, Caristo Diagnostics is working on imaging software that locates inflammation in fat tissues encompassing the coronary arteries which act as early indicators of serious complications including heart failure and stroke.
The software relies on biomarkers on images from computed tomography angiograms, an existing clinical examination used to catch blockages, to quantify the inflammation according to a so-called Fat Attenuation Index (FAI) that estimates the patient’s residual cardiovascular risk.
Caristo’s product will be sold through a software-as-a-service model and is expected to act as a companion diagnostic tool for both healthcare providers and biopharmaceutical developers. The seed capital will support further development of the software as Caristo moves towards implementation.
FAI was invented by Charalambos Antoniades, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Oxford’s Radcliffe Department of Medicine, and developed with partners including University of Erlangen, non-profit medical research centre Cleveland Clinic and charity British Heart Foundation.
Antoniades, also credited as the founder of Caristo Diagnostics, said: “For the first time we have a set of biomarkers, derived from a routine test used anyway as part of everyday clinical practice, that measures what we call ‘the residual cardiovascular risk’, currently missed by all risk scores and non-invasive tests.”
