Pleno has plenty to talk about. The multiomics diagnostic startup has raised $25 million ahead of plans to launch its sequencing instrument early next year, and it’s also tapped a new CEO to lead its new commercial phase.
Vik Vaz, M.D., was named the San Diego-based company’s new chief, effective immediately. Formerly head of Illumina’s strategy and market intelligence teams, as well as general manager of its companion diagnostics business, Vaz will also sit on Pleno’s board of directors. A licensed physician, he has also held roles at Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company.
Vaz will take over from founder and CEO Pieter van Rooyen, who has led the company for the past four years. Van Rooyen previously helped launch Edico Genome, which was acquired by Illumina for its Dragen next-generation sequencing data platform through a $100 million deal in 2018. He also co-founded benchtop blood test developer Truvian Sciences.
“We are poised to bring a transformational new technology to market that will improve patient care and drive advances in biological understanding,” Vaz said in a statement. “The data we have generated already will spur impact across oncology, infectious disease and many other clinical applications.”
Pleno aims to provide a system that can simultaneously analyze DNA and RNA in addition to larger methylation structures and proteins. It has dubbed its multiplexing technology Hypercoding, based on signal processing techniques adapted from the telecom industry, while its Raptor benchtop instrument is designed to detect hundreds to thousands of biomarkers per sample—a capability Pleno says is well suited for tumor profiling, prenatal testing and more.
The company previously brought in a total of $55 million in 2022 through a pair of early venture capital rounds. Now, its $25 million series B includes backing from Deerfield Management, Foresite Capital and Medical Excellence Capital, among others.