Curve Biosciences
Curve Biosciences, spun out of Stanford, develops blood tests that map cell-free DNA methylation patterns back to the organ they came from, extending liquid biopsy techniques from cancer into chronic disease monitoring.
- Category
- Bio and Healthcare
- Fund
- NZVC I
- Website
- www.curvebio.com
What Curve Biosciences does
Curve Biosciences's first products track the progression of liver conditions such as MASH and cirrhosis, aiming to catch dangerous transitions early using a simple blood draw rather than biopsy or imaging.
The secret
Methylation patterns carry a return address. Because cell-free DNA in the blood can be traced back to the organ it came from, the techniques built for early cancer detection also work for chronic disease, and the far larger population living with liver conditions can be monitored from a single tube of blood.
Why NZVC invested in Curve Biosciences
We backed Curve because the science that made early cancer detection possible can now monitor the far larger population living with chronic disease, and Curve has built the Whole-Body Atlas from more than 400,000 tissue samples to do it. The team includes people who led research and product at Natera and GRAIL, where the blood tests that defined the category were built. A liver patient today is monitored by biopsy or imaging, both too slow and too invasive to repeat often, and that is the gap a blood test fills.