Japan’s Dentsu Ventures invests in laboratory-in-a-box maker Cue

Cue and Cue app

Dentsu Ventures, which is a VC arm of Japan’s largest advertising agency, invested an unspecified amount of money in Cue, the company behind a laboratory-in-a-box device/service.

Cue’s cube-shaped hardware accepts proprietary diagnostic cartridges to provide easy at-home analysis of healthcare data at the molecular level. Working in tandem with a smartphone app, the device will analyze a small sample of blood, saliva or mucus to track health indicators such as vitamin D, testosterone, inflammation, influenza and fertility. Cue aims to launch the product in the EU and Hong Kong in the second quarter of 2016. It should also be available in the U.S. sometime during 2016 and in Japan in 2017. Going forward, the company will expand its product to handle twenty health indicators.

The Dentsu Group on its end will provide support for the dissemination of the Cue healthcare device worldwide and the other new businesses that the company will develop in the future. As part of that plan, the Group will rely on its global presence spanning 124 countries across five continents, that employ more than 43,000 professionals.

In November 2014, Cue has raised its Series A round totaling $7.5 million.