Can­cer is the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death glob­al­ly — the ear­li­er it is de­tect­ed, the bet­ter shot pa­tients have of bounc­ing back. Re­searchers have long pur­sued a min­i­mal­ly-in­va­sive, ef­fec­tive test to ex­pose ear­ly mark­ers of the of­ten dead­ly dis­ease, and weeks ago Grail blue­print­ed its strat­e­gy for its blood test for ear­ly can­cer de­tec­tion. On Thurs­day, Third Rock Ven­tures un­veiled its shot at that lofty goal, with the launch of a liq­uid biop­sy com­pa­ny that has raised a meaty $110 mil­lion in its first round.

The com­pa­ny, apt­ly named Thrive Ear­li­er De­tec­tion, is bet­ting on Can­cerSEEK — its blood test-in-de­vel­op­ment de­signed to sniff out eight com­mon can­cer types by in­ter­ro­gat­ing ge­nom­ic mu­ta­tions in cir­cu­lat­ing tu­mor DNA (ctD­NA) as well as pro­tein mark­ers in plas­ma that have been im­pli­cat­ed in can­cer.

“It’s great to be part of an area, where (…) we could do for can­cer what 50 years ago we did for heart dis­ease, when we start­ed screen­ing for high blood pres­sure for ex­am­ple,” said Steven Kaf­ka, Thrive CEO and part­ner at Third Rock Ven­tures, in an in­ter­view with End­points News ahead of the an­nounce­ment.

Can­cerSEEK is en­gi­neered to not on­ly be pow­ered to iden­ti­fy the pres­ence of rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly can­cer, but us­es ma­chine learn­ing to lo­cal­ize the or­gan of ori­gin of the can­cer — even­tu­al­ly, the hope is the test will be used as part of the ar­se­nal of rou­tine med­ical screen­ing tools, to com­ple­ment ex­ist­ing dis­ease-spe­cif­ic screen­ing meth­ods such as mam­mog­ra­phy and colonoscopy.

In a ret­ro­spec­tive study, en­com­pass­ing 1,005 pa­tients with non-metasta­t­ic, clin­i­cal­ly de­tect­ed can­cers of the ovary, liv­er, stom­ach, pan­creas, esoph­a­gus, col­orec­tum, lung, or breast pub­lished in the jour­nal Sci­ence last year, Can­cerSEEK tests were pos­i­tive in a me­di­an of 70% of the eight can­cer types.

Da­ta showed the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the test ranged from 69% to 98% for the de­tec­tion of five can­cer types — ovary, liv­er, stom­ach, pan­creas, and esoph­a­gus — for which there are no screen­ing tests avail­able for av­er­age-risk in­di­vid­u­als. Mean­while, the abil­i­ty of the test to hone in on the or­gan of can­cer ori­gin was > 99% — al­though 7 out of 812 healthy con­trols scored pos­i­tive. In ad­di­tion, Can­cerSEEK lo­cal­ized the can­cer to a small num­ber of anatom­ic sites in a me­di­an of 83% of the pa­tients.

Af­ter da­ta from the Can­cerSEEK study was pub­lished, Sci­ence writer Derek Lowe sug­gest­ed there was room for im­prove­ment, but it con­sti­tut­ed a good start. “The big­ger prob­lem is if you’re go­ing to use this test for ear­ly de­tec­tion: when the team looked at the de­tec­tion rates ad­just­ed for the stage of the di­ag­nosed tu­mors, Can­cerSEEK turned out to on­ly catch 43% of the Stage I cas­es over­all,” he wrote in a post.

Im­age: Bert Vo­gel­stein THRIVE

Can­cerSEEK has been grant­ed the FDA’s break­through de­vice sta­tus, as has Grail’s mul­ti-can­cer de­tec­tion blood test, which re­lies on DNA se­quenc­ing to as­sess methy­la­tion, an epi­ge­net­ic change across the genome to ex­pose can­cer sig­nals.

Ken­neth Kin­zler Johns Hop­kins

Grail, which was spun out of DNA se­quenc­ing com­pa­ny Il­lu­mi­na $ILMN in 2016, has raised $1.6 bil­lion in fund­ing to fu­el the de­vel­op­ment of its test, which is now be­ing eval­u­at­ed in three large-scale stud­ies that will al­to­geth­er en­roll 165,000 in­di­vid­u­als.

Nick­o­las Pa­padopou­los Johns Hop­kins

Thrive — which was found­ed by three can­cer re­searchers Bert Vo­gel­stein, Ken­neth Kin­zler and Nick­o­las Pa­padopou­los at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty — is al­so eval­u­at­ing Can­cerSEEK in a large prospec­tive study. The tri­al, called DE­TECT, has en­rolled 10,000 healthy women aged be­tween 65 and 75 with­out pri­or can­cer his­to­ry.

Da­ta from DE­TECT should be avail­able some­time next year, Kaf­ka said.

“We have a goal of it (Can­cerSEEK) be­ing in the hun­dreds of dol­lars, com­mer­cial­ly, not thou­sands of dol­lars… sin­gle dis­ease tests like (Ex­act Sci­ence’s) Co­lo­guard are list priced at $600 or $700, a mam­mog­ra­phy costs $100 to $200 and if you think of those as the guard rail — we have a mul­ti can­cer test that al­ready we be­lieve is per­form­ing with­in that lev­el of cost.” he added.

Third Rock Ven­tures led the $110 mil­lion Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Sec­tion32, Cas­din Cap­i­tal, Bio­mat­ics Cap­i­tal, Blue­Cross BlueShield Ven­ture Part­ners, The In­vus Group, Ex­act Sci­ences $EXAS, Cowin Ven­ture, Cam­den Part­ners, Gam­ma 3 LLC and oth­ers.

Oth­er com­pa­nies such as Guardant Health and Bio­cept are al­so work­ing on their own liq­uid biop­sy tests. Each com­pa­ny is look­ing to cham­pi­on con­sis­ten­cy and ac­cu­ra­cy — false pos­i­tives in­duce un­nec­es­sary anx­i­ety, and are cost­ly. An­oth­er con­cern is of course, pri­va­cy.

Im­age: Steven Kaf­ka THRIVE

SpringWorks and Satsuma — both biotech spinouts that have closed B rounds in April — are loading up with IPO cash to boost their respective late-stage plans.
SpringWorks

Bain-backed SpringWorks is the better-known company of the two, and it’s gunning for a larger windfall of $115 million to add to $228 million from previous financings. In the process, the Stamford, CT-based team is also drawing the curtains on the partnerships it has in mind for the pair of assets it had initially licensed from Pfizer.

Data reveal that different racial and ethnic groups — by nature and/or nurture — can respond differently in terms of pharmacokinetics, efficacy, or safety to therapeutics, but this disparity is not necessarily accounted for in clinical trials. A fresh analysis of the last decade of US cancer drug approvals suggests the trend continues, cementing previous research that suggests oncology trials are woefully under-representative of the racial makeup of the real world.

Back in the spring of last year, Vanda Pharmaceuticals $VNDA served up a hot stew of mixed data for a slate of endpoints related to what they called clear evidence that their melatonin sleep drug Hetlioz (tasimelteon) could help millions of travelers suffering from jet lag.

Never mind that they couldn’t get a planned 90 people in the study, settling for 25 instead; Vanda CEO Mihael H. Polymeropoulos said they were building on a body of data to prove it would help jet-lagged patients looking for added sleep benefits. And that, they added, would be worth a major upgrade from the agency as they sought to tackle a big market.

Earlier this year, an executive from Juvenescence-backed AgeX predicted the field of longevity will eventually “dwarf the dotcom boom.” Greg Bailey, the UK-based anti-aging biotech’s CEO, certainly hopes so.

On Monday, Juvenescence completed its $100 million Series B round of financing. The company is backed by British billionaire Jim Mellon — who wrote his 400-page guide to investing in the field of longevity shortly after launching the company in 2017. Bailey, who served as a board director for seven years at Medivation before Pfizer swallowed the biotech for $14 billion, is joined by Declan Doogan, an industry veteran with stints at Pfizer $PFE and Amarin $AMRN.

Another big drug approval came through on Friday afternoon as the FDA OK’d AbbVie’s upadacitinib — an oral JAK1 inhibitor that is hitting the rheumatoid arthritis market with a black box warning of serious malignancies, infections and thrombosis reflecting fears associated with the class.

It will be sold as Rinvoq — at a wholesale price of $59,000 a year — and will likely soon face competition from a drug that AbbVie once controlled, and spurned. Reuters reports that a 4-week supply of Humira, by comparison, is $5,174, adding up to about $67,000 a year.