PetDx Files for IPO Following $62M Funding to Advance Canine Liquid Biopsy Cancer Detection

In early 2019, Daniel Grosu faced a series of complex personal crises: his parents were diagnosed with cancer, and shortly thereafter, in April, he received the devastating news that his beloved four-year-old dog, Poppy, had advanced-stage pancreatic cancer.

In early 2010, Grosu served as Chief Medical Officer at Illumina, where he was well aware of the cancer treatment selection tests available on the market. Accordingly, he chose an appropriate product to perform tumor sequencing for his parents.

When Poppy was diagnosed, Grosu intended to follow suit, only to discover that the entire field of precision oncology had not yet intersected with veterinary medicine.

Twenty-eight days after his beloved dog fell ill, human genomics expert Daniel Grosu resolved to launch a startup, applying the latest oncology research to pets to help other dog owners avoid the tragedy of losing their cherished companions.

In this article, you will learn:

• Cancer Is the Leading Cause of Death in Dogs

• Illumina Former Executive Launches Startup, Securing $72 Million in Cumulative Funding

• Partnering with a U.S.-listed pet retail chain to launch a liquid biopsy kit for dogs

• China’s Pet Healthcare Market Is Vast, but User Trust and Consumption Habits Remain to Be Established

According to the PetDx website, cancer remains the leading cause of death in adult dogs to date.

Like humans, dogs have a one-in-three lifetime risk of developing cancer. Approximately 6 million dogs are newly diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States. Older dogs and certain susceptible breeds face a higher risk of cancer.

Animals have a much higher pain tolerance than humans, and since dogs cannot verbally articulate their symptoms as humans do, owners typically only bring them to veterinary hospitals for examination when clinical signs become apparent—such as hunching over in pain, hematemesis, weight loss, or lethargy. By then, however, the cancer is often already in its middle to late stages, resulting in poor treatment outcomes and low survival rates.

Had the disease been detected earlier, these dogs could have enjoyed many healthy and happy years with their families.

Every cell in a dog’s body contains billions of DNA “letters” that constitute the canine genome. Over time, the sequential accumulation of genomic alterations (DNA mutations) leads to the development of cancer. All cells release fragments of DNA into the bloodstream, and the DNA released by cancer cells contains unique genomic alterations that can be detected through liquid biopsy technology.

Therefore, it is particularly important to conduct in-depth molecular studies on canine DNA to obtain clues about diseases.

This is the direction PetDx is committed to.

PetDx was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in San Diego, USA.Aims to develop non-invasive cancer detection solutions by integrating multiple cutting-edge liquid biopsy technologies applied in humans, providing decision support for veterinarians at various stages of the entire course of pet cancer management.

To date, PetDx has secured a total of $72 million in financing.

Data sourced fromcrunchbase, Graphic by VCBeat

PetDx is a team composed of veterinarians, scientists, and business leaders.

Over the past year, PetDx has experienced rapid growth, expanding from just 8 employees in early 2021 to approximately 90 by the end of the year.

Founder and CEO Daniel S. Grosu

Founder and CEO Daniel S. Grosu graduated from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

He previously held positions at renowned healthcare companies such as Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Illumina, and Sequenom, and founded the gene therapy company GENOPRAXIS in 2019.

Grosu has been deeply engaged in the biotechnology sector for 20 years, boasting a strong academic foundation and extensive industry background. He possesses rich experience in assessing the commercial value of projects, as well as in technology and operational management.

Her tenure as Chief Medical Officer at Illumina planted the seeds for Grosu’s subsequent entrepreneurial ventures.

It is worth mentioning that PetDx currently uses the Illumina NovaSeq™ 6000 to meet all its sequencing needs.

Grosu uses the Illumina NovaSeq™ 6000 at PetDx’s office.

Partnering with Petco is a key milestone in PetDx’s commercial journey.

Petco (full name: Petco Animal Supplies, Inc.) is a U.S. pet supply chain retailer that sells pet-related products and services (such as animal grooming and dog training), as well as certain types of live animals (including fish, reptiles, and hamsters).

Since its establishment in 1965, the company has operated more than 1,500 stores across the United States and Mexico, and has built its own e-commerce platform on its website and mobile app, offering both pet care education and related products and services.

In January 2021, Petco went public on the Nasdaq.

Petco not only made a substantial financial investment in PetDx’s Series A financing round, but also announced a partnership with PetDx in May 2021, providing robust channel support for offline implementation.

OncoK9 is the company’s first and flagship product.

OncoK9 is a liquid biopsy for general practice pets, primarily utilizing NGS sequencing technology and proprietary bioinformatics analysis algorithms., enabling veterinarians to provide high-quality care for canine “patients.”

OncoK9 Product Image

Before launching the product to the market, PetDx prospectively enrolled blood samples from over 1,600 pet dogs across 50 clinical trial centers worldwide, representing the largest scale globally to date.

Among them, 600 pet dogs were enrolled in the OncoK9 product validation clinical study, known as the CANDiD (CANcer Detection in Dogs) Study. Reportedly, the experimental data were highly impressive, demonstrating a stable detection rate and low false-positive rate, and proving that the test can detect cancer-related genomic alterations across 30 different canine cancer types.

The OncoK9 liquid biopsy kit for pet dogs requires no fasting prior to testing and is extremely easy to use. Veterinarians simply need to collect a 14–17 mL blood sample from the dog, store it at room temperature using the shipping materials provided in the OncoK9 test kit, and mail it on the same day to PetDx’s laboratory at the University of California San Diego Research Park for ctDNA analysis. Within two weeks, the laboratory will return an electronic report to the veterinarian indicating whether the tested dog has cancer.

Image source: PetDx official website

According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, the product’s detection rate is comparable to that of most advanced solutions currently available.

OncoK9 primarily partners with veterinary hospitals and does not sell directly to individual pet owners.. Annual screening is recommended for high-risk pet dogs based on age or breed type; it can also serve as an adjunctive diagnostic tool for pet dogs presenting with clinical symptoms.

The product carries a hefty price tag, with each box priced at approximately $400.Varies slightly by region.

Although PetDx’s current liquid biopsy tests are exclusively for canines, PetDx’s COO Marsal stated thatThe company plans to offer similar services for cats within the next one to two years and expand these services to other pet species.

Andi Flory, Chief Medical Officer at PetDx, stated,In the future, the company will fully expand tools for veterinarians in the comprehensive management of canine cancer throughout the entire disease course, covering applications such as minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring, recurrence detection, treatment efficacy assessment, and targeted therapy.

Let us turn our attention back to China.

According to the “2020 China Pet Industry White Paper” and iiMedia Research’s “Research Report on the Current Status and Development Trends of China’s Pet Economy in the First Half of 2020,” China’s pet market size reached RMB 202.4 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach RMB 295.3 billion in 2020. Notably, the market size doubled over the five-year period from 2015 to 2019, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20%.

Accounting for 21% of the pet economy, veterinary care is an offshoot of the pet industry and serves as a nexus integrating pet-related economic activities with community-based medical consumer services.

According to statistics, the market size exceeded 60 billion yuan in 2020. Pet healthcare is no longer a traditional “veterinary” industry focused solely on treating animal diseases, but has become a new economic sector closely tied to consumption upgrading.

Currently, China ranks third globally in pet ownership volume, yet the proportion of households owning pets stands at only 6%, far below the market penetration rates of over 30% seen in countries such as the United States, Germany, and Japan.

As China’s pet industry matures, household pet ownership rates and the total pet population continue to rise, driving sustained growth in pet-related demand.

Overall, China’s pet healthcare market is vast; however, due to issues such as excessive diagnosis and treatment under unregulated conditions and arbitrary pricing, consumer trust and spending habits in pet healthcare remain to be established.

Although the author has not yet identified a domestic company comparable to PetDx, we hope to bring a fresh perspective to China’s pet healthcare sector. If you are also an entrepreneur in this field, please feel free to contact the author.

References:

1. JENNIFERVANGROVE<WithPetco’shelp,cutting-edgecancerdetectiontechnowavailablefordogs>

2. <EarlyCancerDetectionforDogsisHere>

3. JaniceBittersTuri<PetDxRaises$62MToGetCanineCancer-DetectingTechToVetsAcrossTheUS>

4. Zhang Fan, “Capital Bolsters Pet Healthcare”