- General
- June 1, 2019
- 4 minutes read
Grail Pushes Further On Multi-Cancer Test
Grail — a Menlo Park, California-based cancer detection company backed by more than $1.5 billion in funding — will go further with its…
Grail — a Menlo Park, California-based cancer detection company backed by more than $1.5 billion in funding — will go further with its plans to commercialize a simple blood test that’s meant to detect several types of deadly cancers. This is after new data from a study showed its multi-cancer blood test was able to detect a strong signal for 12 deadly cancer types at early stages, Grail said in a recent press release.
Grail’s tests had detection rates ranging from 59% to 86% for the 12 deadly cancer types at early stages. The company claimed a combined analysis of this group of cancers indicated good detection at early stages (34%, 77%, and 84% at stages I, II, and III, respectively). The 12 cancer types Grail said its tests detected included colorectal, anorectal, esophageal, head and neck, gastric, hormone receptor negative breast, lung, liver, pancreatic and ovarian cancers, as well as multiple myeloma and lymphoid neoplasms.
The company was scheduled to present this data at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting that held this Saturday on the 1st of June. Grail is one among several other companies that’s working on simple tests for fatal diseases like cancer. Other notable companies in this space include Johns Hopkins-founded Thrive (recently raised $110 million), Guardant Health, Allogene Therapeutics, Juno Therapeutics and Color Genomics.
As cancers detected early are more likely to be cured, Grail is conducting a large clinical research program with various medical centers, comprising of two large-scale studies to “characterize the landscape of cancer-defining cell-free nucleic acid profiles, and to develop and validate blood tests for the early detection of multiple cancer types.” Grail was last valued at $3.2 billion according to Pitchbook data and is said to be considering a U.S. IPO.
Investos in Grail include Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital Group, Johnson & Johnson, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Sutter Hill Ventures, 6 Dimensions Capital and WuXi NextCODE.
