Karius, Inc., a Redwood City, Calif.–based life sciences company focused on treating infectious diseases, secured $50m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Data Collective and Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Tencent, Khosla Ventures, Innovation Endeavors and Spectrum 28.
The company intends to use the funds for the ongoing and new clinical trials, scale up laboratory capacity, and advance commercialization of the Karius test.
Led by CEO Mickey Kertesz, Ph.D., and Stephen Quake, Ph.D., Scientific Co-Founder (and Co-President of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub), Karius uses a combination of machine learning, proprietary genomics algorithms, and sequencing to enable the rapid detection of more than 1,250 pathogens.
Using a standard blood draw, the company’s test identifies cell-free DNA fragments left by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other eukaryotic pathogens in a patient’s bloodstream, even when living organisms are no longer detectable in the blood.
FinSMEs
07/08/2017