NEW YORK – AnchorDx, a Guangzhou, China-based cancer diagnostics developer, said on Monday that it has completed a $40 million Series C financing round.
OrbiMed and WuXi Huiying Investment jointly led the financing round. AnchorDx plans to use the funds to accelerate the registration and commercialization of its next-generation sequencing-based products for cancer, multi-cancer, and pan-cancer screening and early detection. The company said it also plans to develop its technology for other major disease areas.
AnchorDx was founded in 2015 and its product pipeline covers more than 70 percent of high-incidence cancers. In July 2020 at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting, the company unveiled its Aurora assay, which captures and analyzes methylated circulating tumor DNA in blood plasma for multi-cancer screening. The company is using the technology to develop a ctDNA-based screening test for early detection of six major cancer types, and said on Monday that it plans to commercialize the product later this year.
In September 2018, AnchorDx initiated a large prospective clinical trial for lung cancer early diagnosis called the "Thunder Project." The trial is led by Zhong Nanshan, a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and involves 23 Chinese hospitals and institutes. The project has thus far enrolled 9,687 individuals with scheduled follow ups.
AnchorDx said it has built a large database around lung cancer screening, early diagnosis, and treatment based on medical imaging and clinical data collected from multiple clinical trials, and this year will launch an upgraded version of PulmoSeek, its core NGS-based diagnostic test for pulmonary nodule management. The new version of the test will combine liquid biopsy with low-dose CT imaging for lung cancer early diagnosis.