– New Appointment of Isaac Ro to Board of Directors Brings Broad Diagnostic Industry & Operations Experience to Company –
SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 05, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PrognomiQ – a healthcare company focused on harnessing the power of multi-omics data to transform the detection and early treatment selection and monitoring of cancer and other complex diseases – today announced the company’s Series D financing of $34 million led by Seer, Inc., with participation from a new, large, strategic investor in the Diagnostics segment as well as from existing investors, including Catalio Capital Management, aMoon, Invus and Bruker. The closing of this round brings PrognomiQ’s total funding to more than $135 million since the company was founded in September 2020.
PrognomiQ will use this round of funding to advance development of an early detection test for lung cancer, which the company plans to provide as a lab developed test (LDT) and later as an In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) test. PrognomiQ was recently granted a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) license to support the development of the LDT product, and it is currently enrolling a prospective 15,000 subject study in lung cancer, initiated in 2023 to support registration of the IVD product.
Additionally, concurrent with this financing, Isaac Ro has joined PrognomiQ’s Board as an Independent Director. Isaac brings broad experience as an investor, operating executive and equity research analyst in the Diagnostics industry. He is currently a Partner with Catalio Capital Management. He recently served as Executive Chair of Haystack Oncology, and prior to that, as Chief Financial Officer of Sema4 where he took the company public and led the acquisition of GeneDx. Previously, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Thrive Earlier Detection where he helped raise $367 million in funding and led the company's sale to Exact Sciences for $2.1 billion. Earlier in his career, Isaac was a top ranked equity research analyst at Goldman Sachs in the Tools and Diagnostics sector.
“We’re grateful for the support from our syndicate of investors and board members, who acknowledge the exceptional value of our platform, and the opportunity to advance the development of our transformative, early detection lung cancer products,” said Philip Ma, President and CEO of PrognomiQ. “We are honored and thrilled to have the support of our investors and partners, and to welcome Isaac as an Independent Director. We have an exciting path ahead of as we develop products that have the potential to dramatically improve patient outcomes for lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, through early detection.”
The unmet need for early detection of lung cancer through convenient and accessible modalities is exceptionally high, particularly for early stage lung cancer that is both highly treatable and potentially curable. The current standard of care, for the over 14 million high-risk individuals in the U.S. eligible for lung cancer screening, is low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scanning. Although these screening recommendations were originally made in 2013, LDCTs remain significantly underutilized, with low adherence rates of less than 10% due to a number of factors at both the patient and provider level, including having a wide range in the reported sensitivity and specificity performance as well as high false positivity of LDCT tests.
“Given the current adoption challenges of LDCT scanning, a blood-based test to detect lung cancer with high sensitivity and specificity, particularly at the early stages, could dramatically improve lung cancer screening rates,” said Isaac Ro. “PrognomiQ's latest research demonstrates the potential of its multi-omics liquid biopsy platform in early stage detection of lung cancer. I’m excited to be joining PrognomiQ’s board to support the company’s mission to make early detection of lung cancer accessible to patients globally.”
About PrognomiQ’s Multi-omics Approach & Research
Seer spun out PrognomiQ in September 2020 with the vision of fully leveraging the power of Seer’s proteomic platform for unbiased proteomic analysis at great depth, breadth and scale. PrognomiQ’s proprietary approach leverages cutting-edge technologies, including Seer’s Proteograph™ Product Suite, which enables collection of deep, unbiased proteomics data. In addition to proteomics, PrognomiQ interrogates the range of data from genotype to phenotype including cell-free DNA, RNA, metabolites, and lipids to identify potential biomarkers of significance. The combination of proteomic data with genomic, metabolomic, epigenomic, and transcriptomic data provides unparalleled levels of novel biological insights which could lead to transformative new approaches to diagnostic and therapy development.
Earlier this year, PrognomiQ announced promising results from the largest, deep multi-omics study conducted to date. This study, published online in medRxiv, highlighted data generated from a 2,513-subject case-control study analyzing molecular differences between the peripheral blood plasma of lung cancer subjects and non-cancer controls, including those at high-risk for lung cancer. The research demonstrated 89% overall sensitivity and 89% specificity in the validation cohort to detect lung cancer, including 80% sensitivity to detect stage 1 lung cancer.
About PrognomiQ
Founded in 2020, PrognomiQ is a healthcare company pursuing the development and commercialization of multi-omics human tests for cancer and other complex diseases. PrognomiQ uses leading edge proteomics technologies, in addition to metabolomics and genomics technologies, to develop multi-omics products to improve human health. For more information, please visit www.prognomiq.com.
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