Contact: Sarah Seagraves
i2E Vice President for Marketing
(405) 813-2403 or email sseagraves@i2E.org
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — i2E, Inc., recently closed a $700,000 investment in Moleculera Labs, Inc., through its Oklahoma Seed Capital Fund, which led a $1.84 million financing round in the Oklahoma City-based company. The financing round also included investment by the i2E-managed SeedStep Angels and other angel investor groups.
Moleculera Labs has developed a series of tests, the Cunningham Panel, which predicts a patient’s likelihood having Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococci (PANDAS). PANDAS are treatable neurologic conditions that may be associated with motor tics, obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD) and often associated with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
“We are grateful to have the commitment of support from i2E and the SeedStep Angels in Oklahoma,” said Dr. Craig Shimasaki, Moleculera Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “This important financing round gives us the ability to help even more families, and to expand our services to meet the critical need for testing of these very sick children in the U.S. and world-wide.”
The Oklahoma Seed Capital Fund is a state-appropriated investment fund that provides concept, seed and start-up equity investments to Oklahoma high-growth businesses. The fund is managed by i2E through a collaboration with the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology.
The SeedStep Angels were founded by i2E in 2009 and now have chapters in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Ardmore. Investments by SeedStep Angels members now total more than $3.7 million since the group was founded.
In 2012, the SeedStep Angels participated in a $600,000 investment round in Moleculera Labs that was led by the i2E-managed StartOK Accelerator Fund.
About Moleculera Labs: Founded in 2011, the Moleculera test panel was developed by company co-founder Madeleine Cunningham, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center who serves as the company’s Chief Scientific Officer. Over the past decade, Dr. Cunningham and her laboratory at OU have developed and performed a unique panel of autoimmune identification and cell stimulation tests to aid the physician in the determination of a patient’s PANDAS and PANS diagnosis. Currently the Cunningham panel is composed of five individual tests.
About i2E, Inc.: With offices in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, OK, i2E’s nationally recognized services include business expertise and funding for Oklahoma’s emerging small businesses.
