Mer­ck and Pfiz­er back a Michi­gan star­tup's mis­sion to ad­vance tu­mor pro­fil­ing

Dan Rhodes was lead­ing can­cer se­quenc­ing at Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic when he no­ticed that, de­spite the rush of phar­ma com­pa­nies de­vel­op­ing tar­get­ed ther­a­pies, most pa­tients weren’t get­ting the right test­ing — and there­fore miss­ing out on what could be the best treat­ments based on their spe­cif­ic tu­mor pro­file.

In 2015, he set out to change that. With the sup­port of Ther­mo Fish­er ex­ec­u­tives and the help of a cou­ple ex­perts in the field, Rhodes launched Stra­ta On­col­o­gy to ad­vance DNA and RNA se­quenc­ing. The team has since at­tract­ed some im­pres­sive back­ers, in­clud­ing both Pfiz­er and Mer­ck. And on Wednes­day, they un­veiled a $90 mil­lion Se­ries C round to build out a com­mer­cial team and fu­el clin­i­cal tri­als for new RNA-based treat­ment se­lec­tion tests.

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