Chinese Capital Floods In as GRAIL Secures $300M Oversubscribed Series C Funding

Today, renowned healthcare company GRAIL announced the completion of a $300 million oversubscribed Series C financing round.Ally Bridge Group led this round of financing, with 6 Dimensions Capital and Hillhouse Capital also co-leading. Additionally, prominent domestic and international institutions, including Blue Pool Capital, China Merchants Securities International, CRF Investment, Huangpu River Capital (HPR), ICBC International, HongShan, and WuXi Nextcode, participated in the investment.

Since its establishment in 2016, GRAIL, based in California, has garnered significant industry attention.This renowned company aims to realize its vision of reducing global cancer mortality by enabling early cancer screening.It is well known that the stage at which cancer develops is closely related to survival rates, with significantly higher survival rates for early-stage cancer compared to late-stage cancer. However, currently, most cancer patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease, resulting in less optimistic survival outcomes.

GRAIL plans to detect traces of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the blood of asymptomatic cancer patients to enable early cancer diagnosis. To achieve this goal, it has launched one of the largest clinical trials to date, ensuring an adequate sample size. Subsequently,The company has once again performed high-intensity sequencing on these patient samples with unprecedented breadth and depth, leveraging powerful modern data science for analysis, aiming to identify true key clinical signals amidst complex noise for the early diagnosis of cancer.With the support of capital, GRAIL will further advance its clinical research programs to support product validation and development.

▲GRAIL aims to develop a method capable of detecting early signs of cancer from cell-free nucleic acids.(Image source: GRAIL official website)）

“GRAIL’s mission is to save lives through early cancer detection, and we are rapidly advancing toward this goal."In population-scale clinical trials such as CCGA and STRIVE, we have enrolled more than 73,000 patients and will complete the enrollment of the remaining patients as scheduled this year," said Ms. Jennifer Cook, CEO of GRAIL. "The blood test we have developed demonstrates high specificity and sensitivity, and recent data further support its potential. Currently, we are continuing these development efforts to optimize and validate one of our products, which holds promise for the early detection of multiple cancers."

▲At the 2017 WuXi AppTec Global Forum, Dr. Ken Drazan, President of GRAIL, stated that early diagnosis is “the best way to save millions of lives.”

“These new international investors share our vision of bringing early cancer detection products to people around the world. We are fortunate to partner with them,” said Dr. Ken Drazan, President of GRAIL. “Many of our investors focus on Asia, which aligns naturally with our strategy.”We plan to strengthen our capabilities and operations in these regions, and launch our first product for the early diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Hong Kong later this year.”

“We have been deeply impressed by the achievements of the GRAIL team over the past two years in science, clinical development, and software engineering. The significant investment in GRAIL aligns with Ally Bridge Group’s vision to invest in the world’s most innovative life sciences technologies and enhance cross-border value creation,” said Mr. Yu Fan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ally Bridge Group.

We congratulate GRAIL on its $100 million Series A financing round and$900 Million Series B Financingsubsequently completed another major $300 million financing round.We also look forward to leveraging capital support to bring early cancer diagnostic products to patients in China and around the world as soon as possible, ensuring their lives are safeguarded through safe and effective early screening.

(Translational Medicine Network 360zhyx.com)