ClearNote Health announced it has secured $52 million in Series D financing and appointed clinical oncology diagnostics veteran Kevin Keegan as president and chief operating officer. The company said the funding and leadership expansion will support its continued growth as demand increases for noninvasive early cancer detection tools.
The proceeds from the financing will be used to support commercial expansion, operational scale-up, clinical study execution, product development, and broader access to the company’s Avantect early cancer detection tests and Virtuoso epigenomic drug development platform.
With the latest financing round, ClearNote Health said it has now raised more than $185 million in total funding from institutional investors. The Series D round was led by founding investor Mattias Westman and a global, large, long-only active manager. Other participants included former Citigroup CEO and chairman Sandy Weill, ClearNote Health co-founder Dr. Stephen Quake of Stanford University, a Seattle-based family office, and other institutional investors from the U.S. and abroad.
The company’s leadership expansion comes as it continues building on the recent momentum of its enhanced Avantect Pancreatic Cancer Test, a blood-based early cancer detection platform that combines multiomic analysis with machine learning algorithms to improve cancer detection sensitivity and specificity.
Kevin Keegan joins ClearNote Health with nearly three decades of experience in the clinical diagnostics industry. Prior to joining the company, Keegan held senior leadership roles at BD, Illumina, and Hologic. At Illumina, he served as general manager of oncology, where he led the launch of a widely used tumor profiling test.
ClearNote Health said its Virtuoso epigenomics platform was originally developed by scientists in the Stephen Quake laboratory at Stanford University. The company’s Avantect pancreatic and ovarian cancer tests are designed to identify cancers earlier in high-risk patient populations through blood-based testing. The company also noted that its multi-cancer detection test was recently selected as one of two blood-based technologies for the National Cancer Institute’s Vanguard Study.
KEY QUOTES:
“This Series D financing validates our strong commercial momentum and differentiated platform, as well as the tremendous market opportunity in early cancer detection.”
“We are also thrilled to welcome Kevin, a proven industry leader with deep expertise in molecular diagnostics and oncology. His operational and commercial leadership will be instrumental as we scale our organization, expand globally, and increase access to our portfolio of early cancer detection tests for patients at elevated risk.”
Dave Mullarkey, CEO, ClearNote Health
“I invested early because I believed ClearNote Health was tackling one of the most important challenges in healthcare.”
“The potential to detect cancer earlier through epigenomic signals in blood is incredibly compelling, and the team has continued to execute with focus, scientific rigor, and a real sense of purpose. The progress they’ve made so far has only strengthened my belief in what the company can achieve.”
Mattias Westman, Founding Investor, ClearNote Health
“During my career, I have focused on expanding access to genomics-based oncology diagnostic tools.”
“ClearNote Health has a purpose-built platform that has the potential to fundamentally improve outcomes for patients at elevated risk of cancer by diagnosing disease earlier. I’m excited to join this talented team and to help drive the company’s next growth phase.”
Kevin Keegan, President And Chief Operating Officer, ClearNote Health
