This is a record or near-record for a single round of funding in genomics. On May 11, 2021, it was announced that CARIS, a genomics and diagnostics lab with its main facilities in Arizona, raised $830M for growth capital. Investors included Sixth Street, Silver Lake, Fidelity, and a number of others.
- See press release here.
- WSJ here.
- Fierce Biotech here.
- Genomeweb here.
- Biospace here.
- Endpoints, here, notes the net valuation at $8B.
- That's about the same as the recent $8B valuation of GRAIL.
- For comparison, Guardant has a market cap of $11B and Exact Sciences $16B and Myriad $2B.
See the Caris home page here. Headline - "Molecular Science Meets Artificial Intelligence."
Caris had previously raised $310M in financing during 2020.
Quoting from Endpoints, "The company says their platform allows doctors to assess all 22,000 genes in both DNA and RNA to do so, utilizing whole exome sequencing, whole transcriptome sequencing and protein analysis in addition to its AI models."
Caris has a PLA code 0211U priced at about $7500 in Fall 2020, by CMS, by adding multiple crosswalk codes (specifically, 0019U+0036U). Once FDA-approved, the code would be covered under NCD 090.2 for FDA NGS tests used in cancer. FDA issued Breakthrough Status to the Caris review in 5/2019 here. Caris reported submitting two PMA device submissions to FDA in 4/2020 here.
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In other news today, Bluestar Genomics, a San Diego-based startup developed NGS and epigenomics-based approaches to cancer detection, raised $70M in Series C funding. Here.
