Swedish digital health firm AMRA raised $9 million in a funding round co-led by Pfizer Venture Investments and Nordic VC Novo Seeds. AMRA’s cloud-based, CE-marked AMRA® Profiler service converts magnetic resonance images derived from a 6-minute whole-body scan into precise fat and muscle volume measurements. AMRA is now exploiting the technology to move away from more traditional body mass index (BMI) analyses and develop highly precise, individualized body composition profiles (BCPs). The firm claims BCPs will have applications in areas such as patient stratification for clinical trials, metabolic research, and potentially for predicting the development of diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and sarcopenia. The new round of investment will be used to establish an international presence, including the establishment of a U.S. subsidiary, and broaden the firm’s network of researchers and pharma companies.

“Pfizer Venture Investments invests in emerging companies developing technologies that can enhance Pfizer’s pipeline and shape the future of our industry,” commented Bill Burkoth, executive director of Pfizer Venture Investment. “AMRA’s disruptive technology offers a personalized medicine approach to identify those at-risk of poor metabolic health outcomes. We are pleased to assist AMRA in making significant progress in this field.”

AMRA was established in 2010 as a spin-out from the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV), Department of Biomedical Engineering (IMT), and Department of Medicine and Health (IMH) at Linköping University. In March 2016, AMRA reported a marketing agreement with GE Healthcare to make the AMRA Profiler protocol available on future GE Healthcare magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners.

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