DermaSensor raised $16 million in a Series B funding round to fuel its commercial expansion efforts.
The Miami-based company said its latest funding brings its total investment to $43 million. Most major existing investors participated in the funding round. New institutional investors, including Pier 70 Ventures, Kern Venture Group, GenHenn Capital and an undisclosed strategic investor, also joined.
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DermaSensor says the financing comes on the heels of “strong early market traction” for its skin cancer detection technology. The company develops a handheld device that uses ESS, a form of optical spectroscopy. It takes noninvasive samples of tissue, capturing cellular-level information. The technology uses hundreds of wavelengths of light in a manner similar to how sonar uses sound.
Physicians can use its AI-powered spectroscopy technology to non-invasively evaluate lesions. They can look at cellular and subcellular characteristics of a lesion in question for skin cancer. The wireless device then provides an immediate, objective result using an FDA-cleared algorithm.
In January, the FDA cleared the DermaSensor real-time, non-invasive, AI-powered skin cancer evaluation system. The company says it has now surpassed 20,000 skin lesions scanned since its U.S. launch began in mid-2024.
Dr. Preetha Ram, managing partner at Pier 70 Ventures, said the investors were “impressed with how quickly the company has been able to gain adoption for this new product category they have created.”
With the funding, DermaSensor now plans to support new pipeline programs and clinical evidence generation for its existing algorithm. This builds upon recent pivotal study results demonstrating that the device halves the rate of physicians’ missed skin cancers.
“With hundreds of physicians already using our device at health systems, and hundreds more at private practices, it is clear that our first-in-class device is having a major impact on patient care, with approximately 2,000 suspicious skin cancers already detected for referral to dermatology. While we are not yet announcing any details, we also have three active pipeline programs, all of which utilize the same device hardware that is currently in use by customers for running the current cleared algorithm,” said Cody Simmons, CEO and co-founder of DermaSensor. “Completing our financing in this challenging funding environment, especially at a modest increase in valuation from our early 2022 financing, is a result of our strong commercial traction, top-tier clinical evidence, and robust product pipeline for addressing this large, longstanding unmet clinical need.”
