NEW YORK — TwinStrand Biosciences said on Thursday that it has raised $50 million in a Series B financing round.
The round was led by Section 32 and included existing investors Madrona Venture Group, Ridgeback Capital, and Alexandria Venture Investments, as well as new investors Soleus Capital and Janus Henderson Investors. In conjunction with the financing, Section 32 partner Michael Pellini, the former CEO and chairman of Foundation Medicine, has joined TwinStrand's board of directors.
TwinStrand was spun out of the University of Washington to commercialize an error-reducing duplex sequencing technology that the company says can identify ultra-low frequency genomic variants that are undetectable with other methods.
In early 2020, the company commercialized its first products based on the technology: research-use kits for minimal residual disease detection in acute myeloid leukemia and for identifying carcinogens through genetic toxicology assays. Around that time it also raised $16 million in a Series A round.
Later that year, it nonexclusively licensed the technology to Roche's Foundation Medicine, which has since incorporated it into its tumor profiling assays.
Since then, Seattle-based TwinStrand had been working to validate the technology through a research partnership with academic groups and pharmaceutical companies while laying out plans to double its workforce to around 80 employees by the end of 2021.