Investors once again lined up behind Thrive Earlier Detection and its potentially revolutionary cancer diagnostic
The one-year-old start raised a $257 million Series B round from a syndicate of venture and crossover investors, including round leaders Casdin Capital and Section 32 and new investors Bain Capital Life Sciences, Brown Advisory, Driehaus Capital Management, Intermountain Ventures, Janus Henderson Investors, Lux Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Rock Springs Capital, Sands Capital, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and other undisclosed investors.
The new round is more than double the $110 million Series A round raised by the company last May. The company said all of its first-round investors participated in the new financing including Casdin, Biomatics, Third Rock Ventures, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Invus, Exact Sciences, Cowin Venture, Camden Partners, Gamma 3 LLC and others.
Thrive sees CancerSEEK becoming a part of routine medical care, enabling for the detection of the majority cancers before symptoms even appear. CEO David J. Daly says the capital — which includes commitments from payers, providers and other diagnostic companies — will be used to move CancerSEEK into a “robust registrational trial.”
“In April, we published data from the first ever prospective and interventional study of a multi-cancer screening test in an asymptomatic population,” Daly stated in the release. “Our blood test more than doubled the number of cancers first detected by screening, enabling better outcomes and, in some cases, potential cure for these patients.
According to the company, the DETECT-A trial (Detecting cancers Earlier Through Elective mutation-based blood Collection and Testing) – used a blood test to screen for multiple types of cancers in a real-world population. Investigators at Johns Hopkins University and Geisinger enrolled more than 10,000 women with no prior cancer history, using their blood to look for multiple cancers. The study found that the CancerSEEK was effective in identifying previously unseen cancers, across 10 different organs (including seven with no current standard-of-care screening.)
Such a test would be a huge boost to the fight against cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, nearly 2 million people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2020. The disease kills more than 600,000 people annually.
Thrive also announced that Eli Casdin has been appointed to the board of directors.
