Function Oncology Inc. emerged from stealth on April 12 with the announcement of a $28 million series A financing that will continue support development of its CRISPR-enabled platform to profile cancer in patient-specific detail. The platform goes beyond next-generation sequencing to measure gene function, potentially allowing identification of new therapeutic targets and better matching of available therapies to vulnerabilities in an individual’s tumors.
Okwin Inc. is leading a consortium of hospitals and pathology labs from across France as part of a €33 million (US$36 million) project to develop and deploy new digital pathology artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve cancer care. The project, called Portrait, is backed by the French government, and the hope is that by producing more efficient and accessible diagnostic tools, clinicians will be able to better tailor treatments to individual patients at an earlier stage of the disease.
The Biden administration has released the National Cancer Plan, a framework that expands and builds on the Cancer Moonshot program which came into being in 2016. The National Cancer Plan includes a strategies section that calls for development of new methods for detecting cancer and new imaging technologies for early cancer detection, just two provisions that would seem to portend good times ahead for companies that manufacture these products.
Mercy Bioanalytics Inc. stepped into the increasingly competitive early cancer detection field with a $41 million series A financing round to support its Halo liquid biopsy platform. Novalis Lifesciences led the oversubscribed round with participation from Sozo Ventures, Hatteras Venture Partners, Iselect Fund, American Cancer Society BrightEdge and Broadway Angels, an all-women venture capital group. Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings, Bruker Corp. and existing investors also contributed to the round.
Histosonics Inc., the developer of a non-invasive platform that uses sonic beams to destroy tissue, treated the first patient in its phase I study of the procedure as a treatment for kidney tumors at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals National Health Services Trust in the U.K.
Illumina Inc. released Connected Insights in a beta version for the U.S., following its commercial release in other selected countries. Connected Insights, an assay-agnostic, cloud-based software designed to streamline interpretation and reporting across next-generation sequencing (NGS) types, was initially developed for somatic oncology applications, the system will shortly also support whole genome sequencing for rare diseases.
Previse, formerly known as Capsulomics Inc., raised $3 million in seed financing to support the launch of its first laboratory-developed test (LDT), Esopredict. The precision medicine test is designed to detect Barrett’s esophagus (BE) and predict which BE patients will progress to esophageal cancer.
Mvision AI Oy raised €5.4 million (US$5.8 million) in a post seed funding round to help accelerate the development of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered automatic segmentation software, which automates and standardizes radiotherapy treatment for patients. Mvision aims to make same day cancer treatment a standard globally. The funding was led by J12 Ventures and Voima Ventures.
The dominoes are falling on European clinical trials as the unintended consequences of the EU’s In Vitro Diagnostics Regulation take hold. Last year’s implementation of the regulation has resulted in the delay of up to 160 drug trials to date, with as many as 420 trials expected to be delayed over the next three years, according to an EFPIA member survey.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug discovery startup Protai Bio Ltd. raised $12 million in additional seed funding, bringing the total amount to $20 million that will see the company build out an oncology drug discovery pipeline derived from its AI proteomics platform.
