A month after Illumina's big Grail buyout, Exact Sciences scoops up liquid biopsy rival Thrive for a relative bargain
Illumina is going to have a lot of work to do to prove Grail was worth those $8 billion.
Today, Exact Sciences announced that it will acquire Thrive, Grail’s chief rival among the early cancer detection startups, for a sizeable but relatively moderate $2.15 billion. The yawning gap in part reflects the vast differences in capital that have been invested to date in each company. But both have gone toe-to-toe over the last year and a half, with Grail having published data in over 50 cancers but Thrive recently beating them to a key test for liquid biopsy companies.
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