Page 24 - 2022 Westchester County Economic Development Guide

One Million Strong Biosciences
Advancing Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention
Three innovative Westchester biosciences companies are paving the way towards better prevention, diagnosis and treatment for some of today's most challenging health concerns.
Medical robotics company CLARAPATH relocates from Manhattan to RMC Bio 1 in Hawthorne.
According to Clarapath CEO Eric Feinstein, current pathology processes were long overdue for a change.
“The current process is entirely manual, non-scalable, and depends on a shrinking workforce of technicians. With manual pathology processes, 1 to 10 things could go wrong each step of the way,” Feinstein explains. “These issues have been compounded by the pandemic, which has exacerbated labor shortages, creating unacceptable delays in the delivery of timely biopsy results and driving up healthcare costs.”
The Company’s first robotic instrument, called SectionStarTM, is a fully automated system which revolutionizes the reliability and efficiency of the pathology lab. This standardization in the quality of tissue sections is foundational for molecular mapping of human disease and in the development of new treatment pathways.
“SectionStar consolidates many manual cutting, quality control, and
decision making steps into one piece of equipment, resulting in better quality tissue sections, faster processing efficiencies, and lower overall costs, all while providing richer data sets on those tissue specimens,” says Feinstein.
In late 2021, the company an- nounced a follow-on financing, extend- ing its Series B round with an additional $16 million in funding, and bringing the total raised by Clarapath to more than $39 million.
A RISING STAR IN WESTCHESTER
Feinstein was recently named one of the 40 under 40 Rising Stars by The Business Council of Westchester. “The BCW has been wonderful. Marsha Gordon and Heidi Davidson have intro- duced us to different folks and helped us establish relationships,” he says.
“We relocated from New York to RMC BIO1 in Hawthorne because we have a unique set of challenges and infrastructure needs. We cater to clinical institutions, pharma researchers and biotech. Our business requires us to be close to major regional players like Regeneron, White Plains Hospital and New York Medical College. The cost for operating a robotic device, as well as for our space are dramatically different than in Manhattan. Furthermore, to develop robotic equipment, you need access to all kinds of engineers and scientists. Our location provides a central spot – enabling us to pull from a talent base that we could not otherwise.”
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WESTCHESTER COUNTY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT GUIDE
© Courtesy of Clarapath © Courtesy of Clarapath