Last month, BrightSpec, Inc., a University of Virginia Licensing & Ventures Group Seed Fund company, announced the closing of an $18.4 million Series C financing round, led by Genoa Ventures and Arboretum Ventures. The round includes participation from existing investors including Medvest Capital, Felton Group LLC, and the UVA Seed Fund.  Jenny Rooke, Ph.D., and Dan Kidle, from Genoa and Arboretum respectively, have joined BrightSpec's Board of Directors.

"Genoa Ventures and Arboretum are both high-impact investment partners that we know will bring enormous value to our company with their expertise in building and supporting life science tools companies," said Walter H. Colsman, CEO of BrightSpec. "We look forward to working with them as we move forward with commercializing our innovative hardware and software solutions for chemical structural elucidation and quantitation in essential markets like pharmaceutical and industrial chemical manufacturing."

BrightSpec is commercializing MRR, the first novel spectroscopic technique to commercialize in decades, to rapidly and definitively characterize the unique 3-dimensional structure of small molecules, including all forms of structural, spatial, and isotopic isomers. Traditional techniques, like NMR, FT-IR, and MS, often require purified reference standards, sample preparation, and extensive method development to resolve known isomers. MRR does not require reference standards, sample preparation, or a priori knowledge of an isomer, reducing method development timelines from months to days. These abilities make the technique ideal for rapid structural elucidation in high-value use cases like industrial chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

MRR utilizes computational quantum chemistry to predict and validate a new structure, eliminating the need for any reference standards. BrightSpec offers an extensive database of calculated and validated structural spectra and tools for the rapid identification of unknown compounds in crude samples. High throughput analysis can be achieved without chromatography steps, providing quantitation directly out of a crude mixture in minutes. Paired with software solutions and minimal sample prep, customers can deploy targeted instruments outside of the analytical lab for rapid, routine analysis. 

"We have been impressed with the market validation the BrightSpec team has achieved in early customer testing during the development of their hardware and software solutions," said Jenny Rooke, Ph.D., Founder and Managing Director of Genoa Ventures. "MRR has the potential to transform both the speed and precision at which molecules are characterized. We believe the team assembled at BrightSpec is uniquely positioned to bring MRR to market and make it the gold standard in structural elucidation. The platform they are building has the opportunity to accelerate the development of new molecules, as well reduce costs in manufacturing and enhance quality control downstream."

"Our investment in BrightSpec is based on their unique approach to solving the ubiquitous identification challenges in analytical chemistry," said Dan Kidle, Managing Partner at Arboretum Ventures. "BrightSpec is harnessing modern computational tools that bring digital precision, speed, and confidence to classical analytical chemistry techniques."  

About BrightSpec

BrightSpec, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of Molecular Rotational Resonance Spectrometers (MRR). Combining the structural power of NMR with the speed, accuracy, and precision of Mass Spectrometry, MRR provides comprehensive small molecule identification in a single instrument. Rapid, accurate results are obtained directly from complex samples by eliminating the need for chromatography. To date, BrightSpec has empowered customers with proven solutions across the pharmaceutical, consumer and beverage, and industrial chemical industries.  

For more information, visit www.brightspec.com.