Keerthi Vendantam
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C.
Biotech startup Quantgene released an at-home saliva to test for cancer risk, hoping to compete with other genetics companies as it develops even more precise ways to detect the disease.
The Santa Monica-based company, which aims to extend human life by a decade, released an at-home DNA sequencing test to the public last month to help customers understand hereditary factors that may lead to a cancer diagnosis.
<p><span></span>This is one part of Quantgene's four-pronged cancer test, known as Serenity, that uses family history, genetics counselors, a blood test and exome sequencing to scan large chunks of DNA. The company ultimately aims to catch cancer in its first and second stages of development, before it becomes deadly.<br/></p><p>"We hope to unlock a new era in medicine in which trained physicians can detect multiple cancers at early stages in the blood with single molecule precision," Quantgene CEO and founder Jo Bhadki said in an announcement. </p><p>People can request an at-home saliva test from Quantgene's website and have a genetic counselor interpret its results. According to the company, the cost is less than $1,000 and the test also looks at the risk for other diseases. </p><p>The company is also working on a blood test that screens for multiple cancers using a single draw. Quantgene has been working on this early-detection cancer technology for the last five years and is accepting patients via waitlist. </p><p>Earlier this week, announced it secured $6 million in funding led by Vikor Scientific, a life science company based out of South Carolina. As part of the investment, Vikor will take a stake in the company and help market Quantgene's services to its database of medical providers, establishing a presence on the East Coast. </p><p>The idea for Quantgene began at an U.C. Berkley lab. The company has raised $13 million from two previous rounds of fundraising.</p><p>The company aims to establish Los Angeles and South Carolina, where Vikor is headquartered, as "leading centers in genomics-based medical innovation."</p><p><em>Editor's note: This post has been updated to reflect when the saliva-test was released, correct the investment figures in funding rounds and clarify U.C. Berkeley's role in the company's development. </em></p>
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Westlake Village BioPartners, the two-year-old venture capital firm founded by former Amgen executives and focused on bioscience startups named Peter Calveley its chief operating officer on Wednesday.
A former executive at health care industry investment bank SVB Leerink, Calveley will lead the firm's daily operational functions and guide the company's portfolio of young life science startups, many of which started in 2018 through strategic business decisions.
<p>"Where we're really making our efforts are to find the best, most promising technologies which have the potential to be used to develop therapeutics for patients and matching with scientific and business talent to drive those promising technologies forward," Calveley said. "A substantial amount of my role is ensuring that those companies are financed optimally, as well, as we consider financing and strategic options for all of our companies."</p><p>Prior to joining Westlake, Calveley had his hand in a number of bioscience startups while at the bioscience-focused SVB Leerink investment bank. He saw many of them through in-licensing, acquisitions and even initial public offerings.</p><p>Last year, Westlake launched two funds worth $500 million. The largest of the two will invest in 12 Series A startups, with an eye toward Southern California companies. The rest of the funds will go toward Series B or later-stage startups. </p><p>Already, Westlake has invested in at least three new companies — a gene therapy startup in San Diego and two L.A. companies including <a href="https://acelyrin.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>ACELYRIN</u></a>, a biopharma startup focused on immunology.</p><p>The firm opened a 130,000-square-foot campus outfitted with a lab in Thousand Oaks near Amgen for many of its younger startups to work out of. Co-founding Managing Director Sean Harper <a href="https://dot.la/westlake-village-biopartners-2650044623.html" target="_blank">told the L.A. Venture podcast</a> that he was particularly interested in seeding companies — usually with about $1 million — that it could incubate and take through successful rounds of funding. </p><p>"We don't do devices, or diagnostics or digital health. It's all about getting medicines to patients," he told the podcast. </p><p>The firm is taking advantage of Southern California's growing biotech community. According to a recent report from <a href="https://www.biocom.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>Biocom</u></a>, the nonprofit tracking life science companies across California, L.A. County brought in over $1.1 billion in government funding in 2019 — the most of any county in California. </p><p>"The reason why I initially got into the biotech industry was it's an industry which is unique in the fact that it can have an unbelievable impact on young people's lives," Calveley said. </p>
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Two of Mate Fertility's founders — brothers Oliver, 28, and Gabriel Bogner, 25 — intimately know about in vitro fertilization. Gabriel Bogner, who is gay, was born though IVF and Oliver's wife went through IVF to genetically screen out a gene that could pose a risk for cancer.
Both were struck by a system that favored wealthy, straight urbanites.
"A lot of the queer community has been locked out of some of these reproductive services due to some specific discriminatory policies," said Gabriel Bogner, the younger of the two.
<p>Insurance policies sometimes require people try to conceive for a certain number of months before they're qualified to be covered, effectively making it impossible for same-sex couples or individuals to get insurance to cover fertility treatments. And clinics are notoriously costly. Of the 480 in the U.S., most are concentrated in urban centers, catering to wealthier residents, he said. </p><p>The two started Mate Fertility with Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, an endocrinologist who studied under the doctors that conceptualized IVF, to counter that, with lower cost services and in rural and suburban areas. Mate Fertility offers egg freezing, surrogacy, genetic screening and in vitro fertilization. The Los Angeles-based startup just clinched a $2.8 million funding round led by Struck Capital. The cash will be used to add more employees and establish clinics in smaller cities, including Bakersfield.</p><p>The company joins a slew of startups in the fertility space tackling cost-prohibitive procedures. She's Well, a San Francisco-based startup, offers subscription plans for egg freezing and IVF treatments, and Stork Club is an insurance add-on for companies to make the cost of fertility treatments cheaper for employees. But Mate Fertility aims to build clinics that can operate at a lower cost.</p><p>Mate Fertility has yet to open a single clinic but has begun accepting patients in Oklahoma City, where it plans to open a center next month. Clinics are planned in South Arkansas, Anchorage, and L.A. areas including Downey, Long Beach, San Bernardino and Bakersfield.</p><p>"We've kind of gone public with our vision that we want to open 1,000 clinics in the next ten years," Oliver Bogner said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTYzNTUxMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1ODg3MzY3MH0.nEZO0l4eTaQYMRce2g3kzCsjJshddM9KqS0tOuUjqt8/img.jpg?width=980" id="e2459" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="551bee085834b4d18cc52d186077b88f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="6000" data-height="4000" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Brothers Gabriel and Oliver Bogner created Mate Fertility to make IVF treatment cheaper and more accessible in rural areas.</small></p><p>Gabriel said for many families looking to conceive, there are not many low-cost options. And people often turn to these clinics at a vulnerable time in their life when they are desperate. He said clinics take advantage of this and often charge high prices.<br/></p><p>"It allows these clinics to start price gouging," said Gabriel Bogner. "And so it makes these services extremely unaffordable because people are willing to pay a really high price to have kids when there's a really high demand for it."</p><p>It's difficult to find an average treatment cost, since insurance and external factors severely impact how much a treatment can cost, but Mate Fertility said it's $41,000, which it's aiming to bring down the average cost by 40% by subverting market expectations.</p><p>"The sad reality is more than half of all those legacy clinics are bought out by private equity firms," Oliver Bogner said. "So they do have very aggressive market expectations<em>...</em>none of these procedures are all that expensive to actually perform."</p><p>The company is leveraging technology to make its fertility clinics more efficient. Mate Fertility uses a custom electronic health record, or EHR, to centralize patient data and better share information. The company also has patient portals that aim to make the process of paying for treatments easier and an e-pharmacy that delivers medication.</p><p>The technology, he said, will open up access to more people. </p>
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