US-based life science company Karius has secured $100m in Series C funding, which was co-led by Khosla Ventures, 5AM Ventures, and Gilde Healthcare.
New investor Seventure Partners joined existing investors Softbank Vision Fund 2, HBM Healthcare Investments, General Catalyst, Blue Water Life Sciences, Waycross Ventures, Innovation Endeavors and others in this round.
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The investment will enable Karius to extend its reach beyond the 400 hospitals in the US currently using the Karius Test, which detects more than 1,000 pathogens from one blood sample.
The funding will also support researching the health implications of the company’s microbial cell-free DNA technology beyond infectious diseases.
Karius has also announced three new board members’ appointments. They include Khosla Ventures’ partner Alex Morgan, Gilde Healthcare’s general partner Joep Muijrers, and 5AM Ventures’s venture adviser and AbCellera Biologics CFO Andrew Booth.
Furthermore, the company announced positive results from the PICKUP trial, a multicenter, observational and prospective study intended to compare the Karius Test to the standard of care (SOC) in adults with haematologic malignancies (HMs) or haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) with suspicion of pneumonia.
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By GlobalDataThe trial enrolled 257 hospitalised adults with pneumonia and active HMs across ten medical centres.
When added to the standard of care workup, the test detected 40% more infections with the potential to change medical management in 81% of these cases.
This study highlights the Karius Test’s potential to transform care for patients with blood cancers or bone marrow transplants.
Karius CEO Alec Ford said: “The Karius Test can reduce the time required to identify the cause of infections, as every minute counts for cancer patient survival. This additional $100m will significantly enhance our capacity to deliver rapid diagnostic testing to more patients, where faster treatment saves more lives and significant healthcare resources.”
In 2020, Karius raised $165m through a Series B funding led by SoftBank Vision Found 2.
