KIYATEC, Inc. announced today that it has secured an investment from life sciences venture investment company Esperante. Investment funds will be used primarily to support KIYATEC's pivotal 3D-PREDICT study (NCT03561207), designed to validate clinical assays that predict pre-treatment response to cancer drug therapies for ovarian cancer and glioblastoma. Both cancer types are characterized by poor progression-free and overall survival, despite aggressive administration of approved and experimental drug therapies.

While significant advances in the field of personalized medicine have been made over the last 20 years, the industry has made very little headway in its ability to help clinicians optimize cancer drug selection and patient outcomes through the accurate stratification of patients according to predicted response and/or non-response to specific, approved drug therapies. KIYATEC's ex vivo 3D cell culture platform is optimized to use a patient's primary tumor tissue to create microtumors, or tumor spheroids, that can be treated with drug therapies outside the body, to potentially inform and guide pre-treatment therapeutic decision-making. The company's 3D-PREDICT clinical study is currently enrolling patients and Esperante's investment will help support those efforts.

"In vitro clinical diagnostics is a field of particular investment focus for us due to its potential to positively impact clinical decision making, therapeutic selection and patient outcomes," said Dean Slagel, Managing Director at Esperante. "Investing in KIYATEC dovetails very well with our investment strategy. We believe their clinical assays, once validated, have the potential to transform the manner in which these two cancer types are treated."

The catalyst for Esperante's investment in KIYATEC was the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Investor Initiatives program, which brings together emerging biotechnology companies with targeted investors and strategic partners to advance their research and commercialization efforts. KIYATEC and the NCI have enjoyed a longstanding, productive research collaboration that has centered on multiple clinical applications of KIYATEC's proprietary ex vivo 3D cell culture technology platform. KIYATEC's participation in the NCI Investor Initiatives program was a natural extension of this mutually beneficial relationship.

"As a growing biotech company with a promising technology platform, KIYATEC has been a beneficiary of the NCI's guidance in both supporting our efforts to advance our technology across multiple solid tumor types and cancer drug classes while at the same time enabling relationships with potential investors and strategic partners. We gratefully welcome Esperante to a growing body of KIYATEC investors as we advance our mission to provide response-predictive testing services to the scientists and clinicians at the forefront of cancer drug development and patient care," said Matthew Gevaert, CEO and co-founder of KIYATEC.

About KIYATEC, Inc.
KIYATEC leverages its proprietary ex vivo 3D cell culture technology platforms to accurately model and predict response to approved and investigational cancer drugs targeting a spectrum of solid tumors. The company's Drug Development Services business works in partnership with leading biopharmaceutical companies to unlock response dynamics for its investigational drug candidates across the majority of solid tumor types. The company's Clinical Services business is currently engaged in the validation of clinical assays as well as investigator-initiated studies in ovarian cancer, breast cancer, glioblastoma and rare tumors, in its CLIA-certified laboratory. To learn more about KIYATEC, visit www.kiyatec.com.