| Company type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Liquid biopsy, oncology, clinical diagnostic, companion diagnostic |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Headquarters | San Diego, California, USA |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Lloyd Sanders, President and CEO |
| Products | Service analyzing circulating tumor cells |
| Website | epicsciences.com |
Epic Sciences is a company founded in 2008, offering medical diagnostics characterizing circulating tumor cells. Its technology is licensed from Scripps Research Institute, based on inventions made by Peter Kuhn's lab at Scripps. [1] [2]
Initially, Epic offered analysis services to companies developing drugs.
The company's approach involves getting a blood sample, removing red blood cells, putting the remaining cells on a microscope slide, staining the cells with antibodies for a few cancer markers, imaging the slide, then using proprietary image analysis software that counts the stained cells and analyzes the cells based on morphophology and other factors; as of 2014 it took the software around two and a half hours to analyze a single slide; around 12 slides are generated from a standard 7.5 mL blood sample. [3]
As of 2014 it was offering its analysis services to drug companies as a way to measure outcomes in clinical trials. [4]
David Nelson was the first President and CEO. In 2012 Epic raised $13M in 2012 from Domain Associates, Roche Venture Fund and Pfizer Venture Investments. [1]
By 2014 Murali Prahalad became the president and CEO, and in July of that year the company raised an additional $30M. [5] In April 2017, Epic raised another $40 million and as of that date had raise a total of $85.5 million. [6]