OCTOBER 12, 2015
As published in the San Antonio Business Journal
By W. Scott Bailey
bioAffinity Technologies Inc., a development-stage biotech company launched in San Antonio in March 2014, has found solid footing in South Texas. It’s also found interest from East Coast investors who could look to pour more money into an Alamo City bioscience industry in need of greater funding support.
bioAffinity is a privately held firm focused on non-invasive, early-stage cancer screening and diagnosis. It’s now seeking to raise as much as $15 million in a Series A funding round and has already locked in a collaborative research agreement with the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
bioAffinity Technologies President and CEO Maria Zannes said the company is now working to take its initial product, CyPath® Lung, a cancer diagnostic test, to market. That commercialization process could take a year to complete, but San Antonio is already benefiting from bioAffinity’s presence.
“Our investors are largely from New York. They are big investors and large investment firms,” Zannes told me.
A number of those investors became involved in Zannes efforts when she acquired technology from a New Mexico company, setting up the development of bioAffinity.
“They very much agreed that we needed to be in a more sophisticated market and were pleased with the decision to go to San Antonio,” said Zannes about the company’s investors. “Because we are here, I believe they are looking more acutely at San Antonio and at San Antonio companies.”
York Duncan, president of the Texas Research & Technology Foundation, said bioAffinity has drawn more outside interest in San Antonio’s bioscience industry. His organization has played a key role, helping the company secure more talent and lab space.
“The more sophisticated investors would rather have a good management team than a good technology,” said Duncan about the impact Zannes and the group she has assembled have had so far. “The more talent we assemble, the more it helps us build this industry.”
bioAffinity will need more funding and collaborative support to achieve its goals, to expand its role in the war on cancer. Zannes, who lost her father and brother to the disease, is optimistic the company will get both as a result of her decision to move to the Alamo City.
“When I looked around, I did not find the support and expertise in New Mexico that I’ve found in San Antonio,” she said.
