Earli Secures $40 Million Series A Funding to Advance Precision Cancer Detection and Targeted Therapy Platform

The biotechnology industry has long sought to develop breakthrough technologies that enable early intervention in cancer, thereby improving patient survival rates. In secret, bioengineering company Earli has developed a new platform technology designed to help clinicians more accurately detect early-stage cancers for timely treatment. Recently, the company announced that it had raised $40 million in Series A financing. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from institutional investors including Perceptive Advisors, Casdin Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sands Capital, as well as top-tier individual venture capitalists such as Jim Breyer/Breyer Capital (a member of “The Midas List”), Rahul Mehta, former Goldman Sachs CFO and CIO R. Martin Chavez, and biomedical device entrepreneur Shlomo Ben-Haim.

The platform is designed to precisely locate early-stage cancers, thereby enhancing efficiency. Earli will enter its clinical trial phase within two and a half years of its founding. Given the project’s depth, the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic, and the company’s potential impact in the fight against cancer, this would be a remarkable achievement.

In addition, Jim Allison, a Nobel laureate and oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center, along with Padmanee Sharma, and Bob Langer, an MIT professor and co-founder of Moderna, will join Earli Inc. as members of its Top Industry Expert Advisory Board following the completion of the financing round.

Specifically, leveraging technology licensed from Stanford University, Earli is developing a novel platform technology known as “synthetic biopsy.” This technology employs genetic constructs to compel cancer cells to produce biomarkers that are not expressed under normal human physiological conditions. Such synthetic biopsies can detect early-stage cancer, thereby enabling timely and actionable therapeutic interventions. Previously, Earli raised $19.5 million in its 2018 seed round, which was led by a16z Bio Fund of Andreessen Horowitz and Marc Benioff, with participation from Menlo Ventures and ZhenFund.

Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, stated: “The Earli platform is fundamentally different from other early cancer detection and treatment methods. It enables cancer screening to localize tumors, thereby offering greater feasibility. This will be key to the next step in the fight against cancer. We believe Earli has the potential to change the course of humanity’s battle with cancer.”

Cyriac Roeding, CEO and Co-Founder of Earli, stated, “This investment, backed by leading global biotechnology capital, comes at a pivotal time as Earli is about to commence human clinical trials and embark on the path toward commercialization. We are committed to every individual and family affected by cancer. By detecting cancer early, when it is still treatable, we can and will change the survival statistics for these patients.”

Earli also announced today that Dr. Jim Allison, 2018 Nobel Laureate and Professor of Immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center; Dr. Padmanee Sharma, Professor and Scientific Director of the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson Cancer Center; and Bob Langer, Institute Professor at MIT and co-founder of Moderna, will join Earli’s Scientific Advisory Board. They join a scientific committee that already brings together numerous industry luminaries, including Phil Greenberg (co-founder of Juno Therapeutics and former immunologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center), Lee Hartwell (former president of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Nobel Laureate), and Alan Ashworth (President of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco).

Earli’s technological foundation is the “reverse search” approach known as “synthetic biopsy.” This technology, built upon Stanford University-licensed innovations, was developed in the laboratory of the late Dr. Sam Gambhir, a co-founder and pioneer in early cancer detection who formerly served as Chair of the Department of Radiology at Stanford University and Director of its Center for Early Cancer Detection. Dr. Gambhir served as an advisor and board member of Earli until his passing in July 2020.

Rather than relying on biomarkers whose secretion by tumors is uncertain, Earli has developed specialized synthetic compounds that are injected into the human body, where they disseminate and randomly enter both healthy and cancerous cells. Upon entering cancer cells, these synthetic compounds induce the expression of “synthetic biopsy agents” that are not normally present in the human body, thereby exposing information about the cancer cells. This process is achieved by modulating the signaling pathways that initially drive malignant transformation.

Dr. David Suhy, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Earli, stated, “Traditional liquid biopsy approaches for early cancer screening typically rely on ctDNA sequencing and methylation analysis, protein biomarker detection, or circulating tumor cell (CTC) assays. These solutions become increasingly challenging as tumor burden decreases. Even when tumors are detected, they may be too small to be visualized and localized via imaging, or conventional imaging modalities may fail to determine whether the lesions are malignant or benign. This hinders definitive diagnosis and curative intervention at early stages.”

The Earli platform is designed to address this issue. Earli’s approach leverages biological methods to generate a series of synthetic biomarkers activated by cancer cells. These biomarkers are designed to detect the precise location of malignant tumors, down to specific tissues, thereby enabling treatment through precision surgery, targeted radiotherapy, or novel immuno-oncology therapies.

Key data from the latest experiments, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Michael Kent, Professor of Radiation Oncology and Director of the Center for Companion Animal Health at the University of California, Davis, indicate that Earli’s detection technology development has expanded from artificially induced cancer mouse models to spontaneous canine cancer models. Given that the latter can weigh up to three orders of magnitude more, Earli has made significant progress. These findings are highly significant because the design of canine studies closely mirrors Phase I human clinical trials, which is the next step Earli anticipated taking in 2021.

Currently, 70% of patients are diagnosed with stage III or IV cancer upon their initial detection. By the time patients notice signs of cancer, it is often too late, resulting in an average five-year survival rate of only 25%. Earli’s mission is to detect traces and evidence of cancer at stage I or II, precisely locating the disease to enable targeted treatment. Once validated and widely adopted, this platform has the potential to save more than one million lives annually.

Author: Zhou Qianyun