NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Cancer liquid biopsy company Inivata of Cambridge, UK, has raised £31.5 million ($45 million) in a Series A financing round, the firm said today.
Existing investors Imperial Innovations, Cambridge Innovation Capital, and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, and new investor Woodford Patient Capital Trust participated in the round.
Inivata plans to use the new funds to accelerate clinical studies to validate its technology platform, which is based on a method called enhanced Tagged-Amplicon Sequencing (TAm-seq), and to commercialize its first products. The technology was originally developed in Nitzan Rosenfeld's laboratory at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute (CRUK-CI).
The company will apply its platform initially to a spectrum of solid tumors in order to demonstrate the integration of genomic information with clinical decision-making for personalized cancer care.
"With our early presence in Cambridge, UK and our imminent presence in the USA, we are well placed to be forerunners in the practical application of liquid biopsy for clinical oncologists," Inivata CEO Michael Stocum said in a statement.
"We have been impressed with the results thus far from Inivata's initial clinical studies that highlight the sensitivity and accuracy of the company's ctDNA platform," said Robert Tansley of Cambridge Innovation Capital in a statement. "Inivata is already working with a strong network of clinicians in both Europe and the United States and this new funding will allow the company to accelerate its clinical validation and commercialization efforts."
The new funding follows a £4 million financing round the company closed in 2014.