The funds will be used to fuel international growth and to enter into the in-vitro diagnostics market.

Ovizio Imaging Systems, an innovative Belgian company developing cell counting solutions based on quantitative microscopy for life sciences applications, today announces it has secured a funding round of €8m ($9.1m) co-led by New Science Ventures, a US-based venture capital firm, and a private investor.

This funding round also includes Qbic, Nausicaa Ventures, Theodorus III, Mr. Pierre Drion and a few other private investors.The proceeds of the capital round will be used to accelerate Ovizio’s commercial activities in the bioprocessing market, to develop its technology and to expand its product offering. More specifically, Ovizio will use the funds to strengthen its core R&D team with five new hires this year and a further ten in 2016. The expanded team will focus on reducing the footprint of the technology in order to build products that help clients increase their productivity and accelerate their research and discovery capabilities. Part of the funds will be used to bring the company’s disruptive technology to the in-vitro diagnostics market.

“We are delighted to co-lead such a significant funding round for Ovizio,” said Somu Subramaniam, management partner of New Science Ventures. “This company is supported by a strong leadership team and has the technology and market-ready products needed to address an important demand in the bioprocessing market.

“The financial support will allow us to continue developing a platform technology and global commercial organization to address unmet needs in our markets and to improve the day to day operations of our clients,” said Philip Mathuis, CEO and co-founder of Ovizio. “The funds will also allow us to apply our technology to the in vitro diagnostics market where it has the potential for early disease detection at a reduced cost.”

Ovizio develops a patented 4D quantitative microscopy technology based on digital holography. The breakthrough platform is used in life science research, bioprocessing and diagnostics and has already been adopted by global pharmaceutical and biotechnology leaders. The company has recently launched its iLine F device to perform in-line monitoring of viable cell density in bioreactors.

Using current technology, cell culture monitoring is extremely time consuming, as it requires constant observation throughout the entire process. With the existing manual and automatic counters, scientists have to sample, prepare and count cells themselves. Ovizio’s new technology provides automated, in process viable cell counting that has proven to increase accuracy, reproducibility and productivity by allowing scientists and operators the flexibility to continue with other tasks. The cell counting market is expected to reach €7.56 Billion ($8.6bn) by . The global in vitro diagnostics market is expected to reach €66 Billion ($75.1bn) by 2020, with a growth rate of 5.8% from 2015 to 2020. Some of the  driving the growth of this market are the rising incidences of chronic lifestyle diseases across the globe, a growing aging population and the increasing use of point-of-care testing and personalized medicine.

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