Cancer Diagnostics Unicorn Grail Eyes U.S. IPO Next Year Amid Shift from Hong Kong Plans
Recently, VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) learned from foreign media that Grail, one of the world’s most high-profile biotechnology startups, may choose to conduct its initial public offering in the United States rather than in Hong Kong.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that anonymous sources revealed Grail, a unicorn company in the field of cancer diagnosis, is considering an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. market as early as next year. Although there were reports in February this year that the company was considering raising $500 million through an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, an insider told Bloomberg that due to volatility in the Hong Kong market and mediocre performance of healthcare companies listed there, Grail is reconsidering shifting its listing venue to the United States and postponing the timeline to next year.
Grail is a biotechnology company founded by Illumina, a high-throughput sequencing giant, with a focus on cancer diagnostics. Established in January 2016 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA, Grail has raised a total of $1.66 billion across three funding rounds, solidifying its status as an undisputed unicorn. In its early stages, the company secured $100 million in Series A financing, co-led by Illumina and ARCH Venture Partners.
Since last March, after Grail secured a leapfrog $1.2 billion in financing during the first closing and subsequent rounds of its Series B funding led by ARCH Venture Partners, it has essentially joined the unicorn club.
In May this year, it completed a $300 million Series C financing round. One of the lead investors in this round was Hillhouse Capital Group from China, and another well-known Chinese investment firm, Sequoia Capital, also participated in the investment.
Image source: Grail official website
Grail is developing a candidate product, a blood test that combines high-intensity gene sequencing with complex computational algorithms. This method is designed to analyze large volumes of clinical data to identify cancer-specific patterns, thereby enabling more accurate detection of early-stage cancers. According to Grail, the company is conducting one of the largest clinical studies in the field of genomic medicine to determine the patterns required for detecting multiple types of cancer and to validate the safety and feasibility of its product.
In June of this year, Grail presented data from its Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. A total of 1,627 participants in the trial underwent sequencing analysis using three prototypes, including 878 cancer patients and 749 individuals without a cancer diagnosis.
Research results indicate that Grail's cfDNA methylation sequencing demonstrates the highest sensitivity among all detection methods, capable of identifying various solid and hematologic malignancies with high specificity. This includes lethal cancers that are difficult to screen for, whose metastasis at different stages can significantly impact cancer patient mortality rates.
Currently, the company is leveraging next-generation sequencing technology to develop blood-based diagnostic tests aimed at the early detection of asymptomatic or undiagnosed early-stage cancer patients.