Durham-based Baebies, a health-screening startup, has raised $13 million in equity financing, the company said Monday. Bakcers include Rex Health Ventures, Duke Angel Network, Duke University’s DUMAC, and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

The company licenses the tech from Illumina, a genetic sequencing and genotyping firm that acquired it in 2013 for $96 million from Advanced Liquid Logic, a Duke University spin-out helmed by Baebies co-founders Richard West and Vamse Pamula, Baebies president. Many of Advanced Liquid Logic’s former investors including Charleston Angel Partners, and Baebies’ executive team, also invested.

The company is developing technology to expand newborn health screenings, including in developing countries not currently sceening for treatable conditions.

The two-year old company previously received a $50,000 loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

“The impressive team and product vision of the company reinforced the decision by our members to make Baebies our first investment,” said John Glushik, managing director for the Duke Angel Network in a statement. Glushik was formerly with Durham’s Intersouth Partners.

The technology requires regulatory approval and review.

The startup currently lists six open jobs on its web site and West told the Raleigh News and Observer he expects the company will be very large, growing to hundreds of employees and perhaps bigger.

The company also offers, for investigational use only, a digital microfluidic platform it calls a “more nimble bioassay automation platform to rapidly perform multiplex enzymatic assays and other tests.”

See more at: http://baebies.com/