NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Guardant Health has raised $50 million in a Series C financing round, the company said today.
The financing, which was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Formation 8 and existing investors Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital participating, brings the company's total funding to date to just under $100 million. The company raised $30 million in a Series B round last April.
Guardant Health, based in Redwood City, Calif., plans to use the proceeds to make its Guardant360 biopsy-free cancer blood test more widely available and to accelerate its product development.
The company said it is expanding its Guardant360 test by increasing the number of genes and genomic alterations tested. The expanded test, a panel of 68 genes, now includes all genomic biomarkers recommended by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, including point mutations, insertions and deletions, amplifications, and fusions.
Guardant Health was founded in 2012 by two former Illumina employees. It uses a proprietary sample prep method, a technology called Digital Sequencing, to analyze tumor DNA from blood samples.