MADISON, Wis.— Optical genome mapping company OpGen concluded the Series B round of funding for the company, raising a total of $5 million. The money will be used to both create additional commercial optical whole genome maps the company sells to researchers, as well as for internal research aimed at developing a commercial optical mapping tool.
"The funding is important to our growth, as it lets us produce more optical maps to generate revenue right now, while furthering our other model as a provider of instrumentation," says Joe Shaw, CEO of OpGen.
The value of the company's optical maps is that they provide detailed genetic variation information inexpensively without the need for prior sequence information, Shaw says. Current customers for the optical maps run the gamut from large pharmaceutical and biotech companies to academic and independent research organizations.