NEW YORK – Liquid biopsy firm Rarecells said Thursday that it has closed a $5 million financing tranche, bringing its total Series A funding to $13 million. The funds will support the company's launch of a new US lab, which will advance early detection assays for prostate cancer and acute myeloid leukemia.
Individual investors in the financing round were not named.
Headquartered in Paris, Rarecells has developed a proprietary circulating tumor cell isolation platform, called ISET, short for Isolation by SizE of Tumor Cells, which is coupled with downstream analyses for the detection of tumor-associated signals in the blood. According to the company, its testing involves the use of AI algorithms to analyze immunomorphological cellular profiles and altered genome-wide DNA characteristics.
Besides the early detection tests for prostate cancer and AML, the firm's pipeline of products includes a multi-cancer early detection test.
Rarecells said its ISET platform has been used in research on samples from thousands of cancer patients across stages and tumor types thus far.