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Liquid Biopsy Startup Haystack Oncology Raises $56M in Series A Round

NEW YORK — Liquid biopsy startup Haystack Oncology said on Wednesday that it has raised $56 million in Series A financing round.

The round was led by Catalio Capital Management, which helped form Haystack through private equity and structured equity investment vehicles, with participation from Bruker, Exact Sciences' Exact Ventures, and Alexandria Venture Investments.

Baltimore-based Haystack was founded in 2021 by a group of Johns Hopkins University scientists, as well as CEO Dan Edelstein and Chief Technology Officer Frank Holtrup, to commercialize a circulating tumor DNA detection technology for minimal residual disease (MRD) testing. Earlier this year, data on the use of a version of the technology in a clinical trial of stage II colon cancer were presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Haystack said it will use the new funding to continue developing the technology with the goal of launching an MRD test for solid tumors in 2023.

"Haystack's mission is to deliver earlier, more precise detection of residual and recurrent tumors to personalize therapy and dramatically improve outcomes for patients with cancer," Edelstein said in a statement. "With the help of this funding, combined with Haystack's truly differentiated technology backed by decades of liquid biopsy research, we are uniquely positioned to ensure that the right patients receive the right treatment at the right time, which has long been the vision of precision oncology."

For more on Haystack's technology and future plans, click here.

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