Grail, Inc., a Menlo Park, California and Washington, D.C.-based healthcare company which aims to find solutions to detect cancer early, when it can be cured, raised $390m in Series D funding.
Backers included new investors Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), as well as two undisclosed investors, which joined existing backers Illumina.
The company intends to use the funds for the continued development and commercialization of its multi-cancer early detection blood test.
Led by Hans Bishop, Chief Executive Officer, Grail is advancing a test designed to detect cancers in early stages, when the chance of survival is higher than if cancer is detected after symptoms appear. The test was designed to minimize false positives in order to limit associated harms, including patient anxiety and unnecessary diagnostic workups. When a cancer signal is detected, the test has been able to identify where in the body the cancer is located with high accuracy, an important step to guiding diagnostic next steps and care. Grail’s methylation-based technology preferentially targets the most informative regions of the genome and is designed to use its proprietary database and machine-learning algorithms to both detect the presence of cancer and identify the tumor’s tissue of origin.
FinSMEs
07/05/2020