With plans to add 40 to its workforce this year, digital pathology company Proscia raised a $37M Series C

Like most industries, COVID-19 disrupted digital pathology company Proscia‘s plans for growth.

But unlike many, the virus accelerated operations for the eight-year-old Center City company.

“Covid served as an unexpected catalyst for digital pathology adoption, as it was the only practical way for laboratories to operate remotely,” CEO David West said. “This increase in adoption made the benefits of digital pathology increasingly clear, and the momentum picked up from there.”

The company’s seen “unprecedented demand,” he said, and recently raised a $37 million Series C, bringing its total funding to $72 million. The round includes participation from Highline Capital Management, Triangle Peak Partners, and Alpha Intelligence Capital as well as existing investors including Scale Venture Partners, Hitachi Ventures, ROBO Global, Emerald Development Managers and Razor’s Edge Ventures.

Proscia’s recent growth

The company’s signature product, the Concentriq software platform, integrates with anatomic pathology labs’ tech and offers a launch point for AI applications within a lab. Its user base includes 10 top pharmaceutical companies as well as the Joint Pathology Center, which selected Concentriq to digitize the world’s largest human tissue repository of over 55 million slides, the company said.

There’s been a lot of growth for the company since its Series B about two and a half years ago, West said, including launching a new artificial intelligence solution that automates quality control — a tedious task for life sciences orgs using pathology data.

“I’m also really proud of our AI breakthrough in melanoma detection; our team built technology leveraging AI that’s capable of identifying melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, with a high degree of accuracy,” West told Technical.ly via email. “Just last week, we announced a regulatory win,” in that the Concentriq platform was certified for use in primary diagnosis.

Hiring on the way

Since the last raise, the company has also grown two-fold, sitting now at just over 100 employees, with about half in the Philadelphia region, West said. Proscia plans to add about 40 to its team over the next six months, including an “aggressive” hiring push in the local market.

“We’ve found great talent in the region, especially when it comes to engineering and AI, and are committed to expanding our presence here,” the CEO said.

The Series C will allow Proscia to invest in product development, accelerate the adoption of computational pathology and grow its team. It will also scale its commercial operations, including sales, marketing and support teams, and will grow its distribution partnerships following a recent agreement with Siemens Healthineers.

“Proscia is uniquely positioned to enable a new frontier of patient care,” said Jacob Doft, CEO of Highline Capital Management, in a statement. “Digital pathology is a critical catalyst in the acceleration of precision medicine, creating a wealth of new data that is driving novel therapies and optimizing diagnosis so that each patient receives the most individualized treatment. We are excited to be a part of Proscia’s journey as it expands its leadership position with its AI-enabled platform.”