Something big is looming in Harbinger Health’s future, and the company has now secured a sizable funding round to help get it there.
Harbinger is developing a suite of liquid biopsy tests plus an accompanying software program to analyze the collected blood samples in search of the earliest signs of cancer. Per an announcement Thursday, the company has closed a series B financing with a total of $140 million raised to advance the development of the screening platform.
The funding came courtesy of Flagship Pioneering, which ushered Harbinger out of stealth in 2021, with additional support from a cadre of new investors that includes Pictet, Partners Investment and M&G Investments’ Catalyst fund, among others.
Harbinger has now raised close to $200 million since its founding, when Flagship bestowed upon it an initial commitment of $50 million.
The series B will help Harbinger continue to develop its testing model and machine learning software, including by funding an ongoing study that has recruited 10,000 participants to validate the cancer screening platform.
The company will also use the financing to kick-start additional studies—with a focus on high-risk populations—while also building out its data science and commercial teams.
Results of another study that were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in June showed that Harbinger’s machine learning algorithm was able to detect cancer with 82% sensitivity and 95% specificity, with sensitivity increasing in tandem with cancer progression.
In total, all of those efforts are aimed at bringing Harbinger closer to achieving its goal of launching its first product in 2025. That offering will comprise a laboratory-developed blood test that will rely on analysis by the HarbingerHx software to spot biological abnormalities that can indicate the early development of cancer.
Down the line, the data and analyses collected by HarbingerHx and by the company’s DNA library archiving technology from each of its tests will feed Harbinger’s work to churn out a broad slate of low-cost, multi-cancer blood tests, including ones specific to certain disease types and population groups.
“At Harbinger, our goal is to lead the way to a future where cancer screening is routine, affordable and accessible for everyone,” Stephen Hahn, M.D., Harbinger’s CEO and the former commissioner of the FDA, said in this week’s announcement.
“We have a unique opportunity to make cancer screening tools work better and work for more people through our biological and technical solutions,” Hahn continued. “We are achieving this by combining machine learning with insights into the biology of cancer’s origins and individual risk in order to provide actionable information to providers, enabling them to guide improved clinical decision making for their patients. This is where I see our greatest potential to reduce cancer mortality rates in our lifetimes.”