Guardant Health, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company, has raised nearly $100 million in Series D financing led by OrbiMed Advisors. The company has created a non-invasive genomic sequencing blood test for cancer.
With only two vials of blood, the company’s technology, called Guardant360, can detect cells shed from growing tumors and then read that DNA signature to monitor mutations, help physicians to prescribe the most effective therapies and avoid the need for standard tissue biopsies.
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According to Xconomy, the new funding will be directed toward greater adoption among the roughly 10,000 oncologists in the U.S., 2,000 of which have already ordered the company’s tests.
“There are a lot who don’t use it with everyday care patients,” CEO Helmy Eltoukhy said. “A good portion of the money will go toward expanding our education component in the market, really showing what the utility is.”
Reportedly, according to Eltoukhy, this test could eventually be adapted to look for pre-symptomatic detection of cancer as well as looking at probability of cancer survivors getting it back.
As previously reported, Guardant Health also teamed up with health IT and analytics vendor Flatiron Health last year to develop a new platform will pull data from Guardant360 and cross-reference it with anonymous clinical treatment and outcomes data in Flatiron’s OncologyCloud.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
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