Rare cell detection company RareCyte announced it has received an additional $22 million in financing the company says will help it fund a global sales expansion of its consumables and instrument platform.

The infusion of capital comes roughly eight months after the company announced an expansion of its CyteFinder and CyteFinder HT platforms at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting at the end of March. Dubbed CyteFinder II and CyteFinder II HT, the instruments target clinical laboratories and clinical/translational researchers, respectively.

The platform, which was first used in liquid biopsy applications for the detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), now also includes high-parameter tissue analysis, with applications inoncology, prenatal testing, and infectious disease.

The company’s suite of offerings are also valuable tools in immuno-oncology translational research. Its integrated CytePicker Retrieval Module aids therapeutic discovery research via image-guided cell retrieval for high-depth sequencing leveraging the RareCyte Pick-Seq workflow, which can be used for CTC mutational analysis, RNA-based TCR discovery, and differential expression analysis of tissue microenvironments.

The new investment was led by HealthQuest Capital, which includes Castle Biosciences, Biotheranostics, and Lineagen in its portfolio; 5AM Ventures (Biodesy, Purigen), which was also an investors in a $30 million round in 2017; and company founder Ron Seubert.

“RareCyte has validated its rare single-cell platform with research and biopharma customers for numerous liquid biopsy assays and those products plus the recently released tissue applications will be a catalyst for future growth,” said Andy Schwab, managing partner at 5AM Ventures and newly appointed RareCyte board member, in a press release.  “The company is poised to scale, and we are very pleased to have HealthQuest Capital join the investor syndicate.”