(Bloomberg) -- Freenome Inc., a startup working on detecting cancer through blood tests, closed on $160 million in new financing and plans to put that money to work in a new study of at least 10,000 patients to detect colon cancer using a simple blood test.
The GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Andreessen Horowitz-backed company has raised $238 million to date. That should be enough to get it through the pivotal study, Gabe Otte, Freenome‘s co-founder and chief executive, said in a phone interview.
San Francisco-based Freenome plans to submit an application for the blood-based test under a U.S. Food and Drug Administration program with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Medicare agency determines whether to cover the cost of products for the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled.
Freenome’s undertakings may stoke concern for Exact Sciences Corp. investors. Exact shares fell almost 10% on May 10 when Guardant Health Inc. outlined its plans for a similar liquid biopsy study.
Regardless, it will take at least 18 months for Freenome to get data from its study, Otte said. That means Exact’s colon cancer test, Cologuard, likely won’t see competition before 2021.
Talk of a single test that would detect multiple cancers has cooled across the sector -- at least for the near-term.
Single Test
“We all want to see the ability to detect cancer from a single blood test anywhere in our bodies,” Otte said, but there are outstanding questions on how such a test might find where a cancer is located in the body or how serious the disease might be. He doesn’t see a “feasible route” for a multicancer liquid biopsy test right now.
The financing was led by RA Capital Management and Polaris Partners. Freenome added some new investors in the fundraising round including Perceptive Advisers, Roche Venture Fund, Kaiser Permanente Ventures and the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Ventures.
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