Guardant Health snags $30M in Series B money to support blood sample cancer test

California startup Guardant Health, which sells a cancer test based on blood samples instead of biopsies, has raised $30 million in Series B financing more than two months after garnering $10 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital.

The money will be used to support continued commercial expansion of its Guardant360 test. The latest round was led by Khosla Ventures, and included Sequoia Capital and Pejman Mar Ventures. The company also announced that Samir Kaul, founding partner of Khosla Ventures, has joined its board.

"We are seeing strong interest in Guardant360 from both oncologists and patients that are benefiting from having access to non-invasive, real time tumor sequencing," said Guardant Health CEO Helmy Eltoukhy.

Guardant Health claims its test is the first blood diagnostic of its kind that allows doctors to treat patients by targeting cancer at particular points, taking into account the disease's ongoing change in genetic structure. The test is sensitive enough to catch DNA fragments of the cancer that are cast off into the bloodstream in low levels. Once identified, physicians can personalize treatment for the patient based on the data.

Foundation Medicine ($FMI) is in a similar space as Guardant Health, but uses a slightly different approach. Its FoundationOne test is designed to identify mutations for 200 genes relating to cancer.

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