Blue Ox Healthcare Partners (Blue Ox), an investment firm focused on providing growth capital to healthcare companies in the middle market, has led a USD52 million Series E investment in Epic Sciences (Epic), a diagnostics company developing solutions to personalise and advance cancer treatment and management.
Proceeds from the fundraising round are expected to be used to accelerate Epic’s clinical studies for oncology decision support services in its pipeline and execution of its long-term growth plan.
Based in San Diego, Epic is transforming late-stage cancer treatment by applying computer vision and machine learning techniques to match patients’ individual cancer cells to individualized drug therapies. The result is prolonged life and lower treatment costs. Epic’s business aligns well with Blue Ox’s strategy of investing in and growing healthcare companies focused on individuality and value-based care. The Blue Ox management team will bring its deep healthcare industry experience and operational expertise to assist Epic in achieving its financial and strategic goals.
Charles D Kennedy, MD, Managing Partner at Blue Ox, says: “Healthcare is moving towards individualised therapies and financing. Companies that create the science and technology innovations must have the resources to grow and the expertise to introduce these disruptive services to a value-based healthcare industry. Epic’s revolutionary diagnostics and decision support analytics optimize cancer treatment by ensuring each patient’s unique cancer cells get therapy that offers the highest likelihood of prolonged survival while avoiding wasteful treatments that the patient’s individual cancer cells do not have the biology to respond to.”
