Even though heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, a significant portion of people who experience a heart attack are unaware that they have an underlying condition.
Cleary, a cardiovascular imaging startup, wants to solve this problem. By analyzing CT scans of the heart, the company's AI software aims to identify early-stage coronary artery disease, similar to how mammograms and colonoscopies detect breast and colon cancer. Masu.
“The vast majority of people who die from heart disease or a heart attack have no symptoms,” said cardiologist James Ming, who founded Cleary in 2017. We need to start testing.” The company grew out of a clinical program that Min founded in 2003 at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medicine.
Cleary is currently conducting a multi-year trial to prove that its screen can provide a more accurate picture of heart health in people without symptoms of the disease than routine non-invasive methods such as measuring blood pressure or cholesterol levels. A large-scale clinical trial is being conducted.
If the company can obtain regulatory approval to test large populations, it would be a major boon for the company and could significantly expand its market reach and revenue.
Such great potential has attracted significant investor interest. On Wednesday, Clerly announced it had raised $106 million in a Series C extension round led by Insight Partners with participation from Battery Ventures. This major funding comes just over two years after Clerly raised $223 million in Series C led by T. Rowe Price and Fidelity.
Image credit: Clerly /
An extension round is when a company sells another part of its company at the price of the previous round. Although extension rounds often indicate that a startup is not growing well (they would likely raise a new round at a higher valuation), Scott, Managing Director of Insight Partners Barclay said Clearys is growing fast enough. He said allowing Incyte to participate in previous rounds clearly allows it to gain additional capital to fund future growth and multi-site clinical trials.
Min told TechCrunch that the company doesn't necessarily need additional capital, given that Clerly's other backers are healthcare venture capital and crossover companies, but one of the largest enterprise software investors He said he is excited to add Insight Partners to the company's capital list.
Barkley is confident in Cleary's potential. Although the company is awaiting full FDA approval for general heart screening, its algorithms have already been cleared for diagnostics in symptomatic patients, and Medicare announced in October that the company's plaque analysis test will be eligible for coverage. Approved scope. Plaque buildup is a common cause of heart attacks.
Until recently, patients complaining of chest pain were diagnosed with stress tests, which include monitoring heart function during physical activity, or coronary angiography, an invasive procedure that uses a catheter and X-rays to measure blood flow to the heart. There was a possibility that
Apparently, the company claims that its AI-powered analysis of CT scan images is less invasive than stress tests or angiograms, and by agreeing to pay for the test, it can help health insurance companies and Medicare. seems to agree.
The company's software has been commercially available for the past four years, during which time Clerly has experienced compound annual growth of more than 100%, Min said. He added that the company's diagnostic methods for the approximately 15 million people who suffer from heart disease each year are recognized by most payers, and the company is poised to continue its growth trajectory.
Obviously it's not without competition. Other companies working on AI-powered image analysis for heart plaque include HeartFlow and Elucid, given that both ultimately want to screen the entire population above a certain age. We believe there is room for multiple winners in this market.