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Penn Spinout Liquid Biotech Raises $2M in Seed Funding

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — University of Pennsylvania spinout Liquid Biotech announced today that it has raised $2 million in seed financing from Japan's Oncolys Biopharma, which it said would be used to further develop and refine its proprietary circulating tumor cell (CTC) identification and isolation technology.

"The funding we have obtained gives us a good runway to develop proof-of-concept that our diagnostic test has the sensitivity to detect cancer in a clinical setting," Liquid Biotech COO Jeffrey Janco said in a statement.

Specific terms of the financing were not disclosed.

"Our technology can provide a non-invasive, more sensitive, and rapid diagnostic test to potentially detect metastatic cancer earlier," Liquid Biotech President and CEO Philip Sass added in the statement. "Moreover, because we can isolate individual tumor cells from cancer patients in real time, we can use the isolated CTCs derived directly from cancer patients to develop innovative biomarkers, discover novel cancer pathways, and potentially allow the oncologist to change the patient's therapy in real time to match the cancer cells' genetics as cancer cells mutate during the course of treatment."