GeneCentric Therapeutics raises $8 million for cancer diagnostics platform
Durham-based GeneCentric Therapeutics, a cancer diagnostics company, has closed on an $8 million round of venture capital to launch and commercialize a novel liquid biopsy platform for guiding precision cancer therapy.
Proceeds from the Series C financing will be used to support GeneCentric’s GenomicsNext. This platform provides thousands of gene-expression measurements and high-fidelity DNA variant detection from tumor DNA that circulates in the blood.
The company said in a news release that the novel gene-expression platform would accelerate the growth of GeneCentric’s pipeline of “predictive response signatures” for oncology therapeutics development.
“With a single blood sample from a cancer patient, our GenomicsNext liquid biopsy platform can determine the gene expression of drug target genes, molecular subtypes and predictive gene signatures, in addition to mutations and fusions,” said Mike Milburn, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of GeneCentric. “We believe our unique fragmentomics technology will become the best-in-class application for yielding greater insights and biomarker coverage from liquid biopsies to better aid diagnosis and treatment selection for patients.”
North Carolina investors are involved
The Series C funding round was led by Durham-based Hatteras Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors IAG Capital Partners of Charleston, Alexandria Venture Investments of Pasadena and Burlington-based LabCorp.
“While we see many new liquid biopsy companies seeking funding, GeneCentric has the most compelling opportunity we have identified,” said Clay Thorp, general partner at Hatteras Ventures Partners. “GenomicsNext has the potential to become the ‘decoder ring’ for translating a broad array of tissue-based biomarkers into liquid biopsy formats. This could transform how patients are identified and how disease and treatments are monitored.”
The financing is expected to provide a cash runway for GeneCentric through 2026.
“We are grateful for the enthusiasm and support of our investors and expect to make the GenomicsNext platform commercially available as a powerful research tool for biopharmaceutical companies in 2025,” Milburn said.
Beyond gene mutations
While liquid biopsy enables the diagnosis or analysis of tumors using a blood or fluid sample rather than a tissue biopsy, it typically focuses on measuring mutations in genes and not their expression.
This narrow focus limits its utility because important measures, including molecular subtypes and common biomarkers for targeted therapy, such as HER2 or antibody-drug conjugates, are not measured by most assays, potentially delaying diagnosis and administration of life-saving oncology therapeutics, the company said.
“We’ve known that gene expression is a powerful diagnostic adjunct to traditional DNA alterations, but unlike tumor tissue profiling today, gene expression measurement is largely missing from liquid biopsy assays,” said Kirk Beebe, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of GeneCentric. “The GenomicsNext platform delivers a dramatic step change in the diagnostic utility of ctDNA-based liquid biopsies by ushering in this dimension.”
The company’s website says liquid biopsy “is a fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar market, but current assays miss critical biology hidden in gene expression. “Most tests rely solely on static DNA alterations. We’ve added dynamic gene expression – turning passive genomic data into active, intelligent data to overcome current limitations in liquid biopsies for precision oncology.”
GeneCentric commercializes its technology through strategic collaborations with biopharmaceutical and diagnostics companies in applications throughout preclinical testing, clinical drug development and commercialization lifecycle phases.
GeneCentric was spun out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011. It was founded by Myla Lai-Goldman, M.D., a pathologist, and two UNC researchers, Charles Perou, Ph.D., and Neil Hayes, M.D., MPH.