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RFPi, a US-based medical imaging technology spinout of East Carolina University, has collected $2m toward a targeted $7.2m round from undisclosed investors, according to a regulatory filing. RFPi is developing a non-invasive medical imaging camera that would give real-time visual feedback on the patient’s blood circulation and tissue perfusion – the passage of fluid to organs and tissues – based on calculations from low-force lasers and computer vision algorithms. The funding will go to commercial expansion following regulatory clearance from US regulator Food and Drug Administration in December 2018. Regulatory filings suggest the spinout had raised a total of $7.6m in equity funding and debt over three previous rounds from 2015 until 2019. Harvard University launched US-based DNA nanotechnology spinout Torus Biosystems on Friday to commercialise technology from its Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Torus Biosystems aims to deliver nucleotide-driven diagnostic tests capable of discerning pathogens more precisely than existing methods in order to identify different genetic variants of diseases as well as instances where the pathogen count would otherwise go undetected because it is too small. The technology is grounded in founding inventions from Peng Yin, a core faculty at Wyss Institute and professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Systems Biology, and David Zhang, now an associate professor of bioengineering at Rice University. David Walt, another core faculty member at Wyss Institute who also holds appointments with Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is a co-founder of Torus Biosystems.

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