Strata Oncology, a precision medicine company, today announced the completion of a Series A financing of $12M. The financing will fuel Strata’s state-of-the-art tumor sequencing operation and implementation of the Strata Trial, a nation-wide effort aimed at substantially increasing the number of enrollments in precision medicine clinical trials. Arboretum Ventures and Baird Capital co-led the financing, with additional funding provided by Strata’s existing investor, Michigan eLab. 

“For most cancer patients in the U.S., tumor sequencing is not standard of care, so patients remain unaware of their eligibility for promising precision medicine clinical trials,” said Dan Rhodes, Ph.D., Strata Oncology co-founder and CEO. “By providing no-cost tumor sequencing for 100,000 cancer patients, Strata intends to be the catalyst, helping patients find the right trials and helping pharma find the right patients.”

Additionally, the company has entered into a strategic partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific, which will serve as the technology provider and contribute Ion S5™ XL next-generation sequencing systems, AmpliSeq™ technology, and Oncomine™ assays.

“Thermo Fisher is committed to enabling its growing list of strategic partners to drive the era of precision medicine through its targeted, next-generation sequencing technology, which will help laboratories and clinicians provide the best oncology treatment possible in the future,” said Joe Bernardo, president of Clinical Sequencing at Thermo Fisher.

Rhodes, who is the former co-founder and CEO of Compendia Bioscience, a cancer genomics firm that was acquired in 2012 by Life Technologies, co-founded Strata Oncology in 2015 with oncologist Keith Flaherty, M.D., from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General, and pathologist Scott Tomlins, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Michigan Medical School. Flaherty is a world leader in precision oncology clinical trials and Tomlins is an expert in tumor sequencing and molecular pathology.

Rhodes and Flaherty are joined on Strata’s Board of Directors by Jan Garfinkle (Arboretum Ventures), Nicole Walker (Baird Capital) and Jeff Williams, founder and CEO of NeuMoDx Molecular.