It's a Beautiful Day as U2's Bono, Others Back Bay Area Color Genomics's $45 Million Funding Round

It's a Beautiful Day as U2's Bono, Others Back Bay Area Color Genomics's $45 Million Funding Round September 28, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

BURLINGAME, Calif. – U2 front-man and well known philanthropist Bono, along with others, backed a $45 million Series B round of funding for the Bay Area’s Color Genomics, a company that developed a testing kit to determine hereditary risks to cancer and other diseases.

The funding will be used to expand the company’s efforts to “democratize” access to genetic testing. Color Genomics provides testing and analysis to determine inherited predisposition to various cancers–part of the personalized medicine trend in health care. By knowing what a patient may be predisposed to, physicians can develop a healthcare regimen to address those issues.

“The new funding will go toward bringing even more people access to potentially life-saving genetic information and building the open databases necessary to further global research and development around major diseases,” Elad Gil, co-founder and chief executive officer of Color Genomics, said in a statement.

Greater access to genetics testing will be a greater benefit to patients and physicians alike, Gil added. Color Genomics services are now available in more than 150 countries. In April 2015, Color Genomics presented its Color Test, a comprehensive genetic sequencing test. The Color Test analyzes the 19 major genes currently known to be responsible for inherited predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer, including BRCA1 and BRCA2. The testing kits are available for $249. Color Genomic requires that patients go through a physician, either their own or an independent doctor the company can provide access to, before a test will be provided.

Over the past year, the company was able to expand its testing to cover eight of the most common hereditary cancers, including breast, ovarian, colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Between 10 and 15 percent of cancers are considered hereditary, Color Genomics said on its website. Women with a mutation in BRCA1 face up to an 80 percent risk of developing breast cancer, and up to a 50 percent risk of developing ovarian cancer by the age of 80, the company said. The tests only look at hereditary links to cancers and other diseases and not lifestyle choices, which can play a role in developing an illness, the company said.

“Increased access to genetic information is enabling doctors and their patients to create personalized plans for better prevention, detection and treatment of hereditary disease,” he said.

The new round of investing brings Color Genomics total fundraising efforts to $60 million since its founding in 2015. In addition to Bono, funding was led by General Catalyst, as well as existing investors including Susan L. Wagner, 8VC, Khosla Ventures and Emerson Collective.

In addition to the funding, Wagner, chief operating officer of BlackRock Investments, and Hemant Taneja, a managing director at General Catalyst, were both named to Color Genomics’ board of directors.

“Sue and Hemant are both pioneers in their respective industries,” Othman Laraki, co-founder and president of Color Genomics, said in a statement. “Sue’s strong experience in finance and building a global business will be of great value to Color as we continue to grow. Hemant’s extensive experience in investments across healthcare and diagnostics as well as enterprise technology mirrors Color’s foundation of intersecting medical information with computer science and machine learning.”

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