Precede Biosciences recently emerged from stealth with a breakthrough, comprehensive, blood-based approach to revealing disease-defining transcriptional biology – which is a first for the diagnostic field. The company’s genome-wide platform simultaneously explores the dynamic, feature-rich space of gene promoters, gene enhancers, and the DNA methylome from a single milliliter (1mL) of plasma.
Precede is now actively partnering with drug developers to accelerate the development of precision medicines by identifying the biology associated with response and resistance to treatment and by identifying novel targets mechanistically linked to disease biology. At the same time, Precede is developing blood-based clinical tests to advance precision use of cancer medicines in clinical practice. Precede’s platform is available to drug developers and academic researchers as a Research Use Only (RUO) platform as of today. Since being founded, Precede has secured $57 million in backing from leading venture and private equity investors.
Genomic liquid biopsy (LBx) technologies have had a major impact on cancer care over the last decade. And these technologies have focused on somatic mutations and have both impacted treatment decisions for millions of patients and enabled the success of many targeted oncology drug development programs. But these technologies are limited to cancer and cannot adequately guide treatment decisions based on transcriptionally regulated disease targets such as HER2 and ER in breast cancer or address emerging disease targets of interest for new modalities like antibody drug conjugates (ADCs). Existing technologies have also been limited by their inability to assess the dynamic impact of treatment on targets and pathways of interest. Unique among existing and emerging LBx platforms, Precede offers access to directly interpretable gene level and pathway level biology genome-wide and can be used to elucidate a patient’s biological state at any given time from 1mL of plasma.
The advancement of Precede’s first-in-class platform technology required mastery of complex molecular biology and the development of sophisticated machine-learning approaches, a journey that started at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and has spanned multiple years. And Precede’s platform has been extensively tested having now generated more than 7,000 genome-wide disease transcriptional profiles across cancers and several other diseases and conditions. First scientific data from the platform have been accepted for oral presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2023 in October and will be presented by one of the company’s scientific founders. This data have also been accepted for simultaneous publication in a major medical journal.
Precede was co-founded through the 4:59 Initiative at 5AM Ventures and supported in the seed round by 5AM Ventures and Binney Street Capital of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The company’s Series A funding was co-led by 5AM Ventures and Lilly Asia Ventures – who were joined by Illumina Ventures, Bristol Myers Squibb, Osage University Partners, and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).
KEY QUOTES:
“Our platform is a true first for the field as it enables comprehensive profiling of dynamic disease-site biology at the gene and pathway level from a simple blood draw. Existing liquid biopsy technologies have impacted millions of patients with cancer over the last decade, and the precision medicine application space for Precede transcends that of even the most successful of these liquid biopsy technologies, creating a significant opportunity for us to impact the practice of medicine.”
— Rehan Verjee, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Precede Biosciences
“Having worked with many emerging and established liquid biopsy companies, I’m excited about the potential of Precede’s liquid biopsy platform to inform drug development in a way that no other platform has been able to do to date. Precede’s approach can enable intelligent and informed decisions in a great many contexts where we have just lacked important resolution into disease biology.”
— Carl Barrett, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Precede Biosciences
“Precede has assembled a team of experts with a proven track record of success in liquid biopsy product development and the translational sciences. The technology has advanced to a place where Precede can now deploy the platform at scale to inform drug development and, at the same time, accelerate the development of clinical tests that can be blood-based alternatives to invasive tissue-based standards.”
— Kush Parmar, MD, Ph.D., Managing Partner at 5AM Ventures, who seeded and incubated the company and co-led Precede’s Series A financing
“Precede’s ability to discover interpretable and clinically relevant biology from 1mL of plasma will broaden access to liquid biopsies across a wide range of applications in cancer and beyond.”
— Judith Li, MBA, Partner at Lilly Asia Ventures, who co-led the Series A
