NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Strata Oncology said today that it has raised $12 million in a Series A financing to fuel its tumor sequencing operations.
The financing was co-led by Arboretum Ventures and Baird Capital, and included existing investor Michigan eLab. Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Strata said it will use the funds to implement the Strata Trial, a nationwide effort to increase the number of enrollments in precision medicine clinical trials.
In addition, the company said it has entered into a strategic partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific, which will serve as Strata's technology provider and contribute S5 XL NGS systems, AmpliSeq reagents, and Oncomine assays.
Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"For most cancer patients in the US, tumor sequencing is not standard of care, so patients remain unaware of their eligibility for promising precision medicine clinical trials." Strata Co-founder and CEO Dan Rhodes said in a statement. "By providing no-cost tumor sequencing for 100,000 cancer patients, Strata intends to be the catalyst, helping patients find the right trials and helping pharma find the right patients."
Joe Bernardo, president of clinical sequencing at Thermo Fisher, said in a statement that the firm is "committed to enabling its growing list of strategic partners to drive the era of precision medicine through its targeted, next-generation sequencing technology."
Separately, Thermo Fisher announced the Ion Torrent Developers Alliance program, which provides "flexible options" to access sequencing systems, the firm said in a statement. Thermo Fisher did not specifically disclose how participants would benefit from the program.
"Partnering with customers as they develop simple, easy-to-use tests that meet regulatory guidelines will make precision medicine more accessible to community hospitals around the world as well as the patients they serve," Bernardo said. The firm noted that HTG Molecular, Invivoscribe Technologies, and Geneuity use Ion Torrent technology for assay development.