Strata Oncology has raised $12 million and teamed up with Thermo Fisher Scientific ($TMO) to embark on a campaign to sequence the tumors of 100,000 cancer patients for free. The large-scale, no-cost tumor sequencing initiative is seen by Strata as a way to increase the number of cancer patients who are molecularly matched to clinical trials.
Currently, many cancer patients never have their tumors sequenced, leaving them unaware of their eligibility for trials of precision medicines. For developers of drugs designed for patients with specific mutations, this lack of knowledge shrinks the pool of potential participants their studies can tap into and, in doing so, lengthens the time it takes to fully enroll trials. Given the intense competition for cancer patients in certain indications and the value of shaving even weeks off development times, a system that can address the bottleneck is potentially attractive to drug developers.
That is the idea underpinning the founding of Strata, an Ann Arbor, MI-based startup that has set up shop to bridge the gap between patients and clinical research sponsors. The concept and the team behind it have persuaded Arboretum Ventures and Baird Capital to co-lead a $12 million Series A round with support from existing investor Michigan eLab. And Strata has gained access to the tools it will need to carry out its sequencing campaign through a deal with Thermo Fisher, which is providing the startup with Ion S5 XL NGS systems, AmpliSeq technology and Oncomine assays. Read more here…