Promis­ing to match more NSCLC pa­tient with tar­get­ed drugs, Cam­bridge spin­out Ini­va­ta read­ies US launch of liq­uid biop­sy

This has been a big month for Ini­va­ta, the liq­uid biop­sy com­pa­ny spun out from Can­cer Re­search UK and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. Af­ter se­cur­ing Medicare cov­er­age for its first blood test — used to pro­file ad­vanced non-small cell lung can­cer pa­tients — it has of­fi­cial­ly closed a $52.6 mil­lion (£39.8 mil­lion) Se­ries B to fund a com­mer­cial roll­out.

While ad­vances in tar­get­ed ther­a­py have dra­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pand­ed treat­ment op­tions for NSCLC pa­tients — from check­points to ty­ro­sine ki­nase in­hibitors to nov­el RET in­hibitors — it is of­ten dif­fi­cult to test pa­tients for all FDA-ap­proved drugs us­ing the tra­di­tion­al tis­sue biop­sy, Ini­va­ta CEO Clive Mor­ris tells me. Some­times the pa­tients sim­ply don’t have enough tis­sue to draw from; oth­er times there are med­ical rea­sons stand­ing in the way.

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