Predicta Biosciences Advances Multiple Myeloma Care with Liquid Biopsy Technology

Biotech funding rounds often tell us more than how much money changed hands — they reveal where investors think the science is headed. For Cambridge-based Predicta Biosciences, a $23.4 million Series A announced in October 2025 signals confidence that liquid biopsy technology can finally bring multiple myeloma diagnostics into the modern era.

The raise, led by Engine Ventures with backing from Illumina Ventures, Mass General Brigham Ventures, Dana-Farber’s Binney Street Capital, and others, adds to a $5.2 million seed round last year and brings total funding to $28.6 million.

The capital will fuel expansion of Predicta’s CLIA lab, hiring, and commercialization of its flagship diagnostic GenoPredicta, while also pushing into new blood cancer and autoimmune disease programs.

The Diagnostic Gap in Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer after lymphoma, affecting hundreds of thousands worldwide. The market for therapies reached $27.75 billion in 2024 and is projected to approach $50 billion by 2034. But while treatment innovation has surged — from bispecific antibodies to CAR-T therapies—diagnostics haven’t kept pace.

Today, diagnosis and monitoring still rely on bone marrow biopsies, which are invasive and painful. A single biopsy can also miss the bigger picture, since myeloma cells don’t spread evenly throughout the marrow. Standard FISH testing adds another layer of frustration: results vary by lab, reproducibility is limited, and key molecular features often go undetected. For patients, this means more procedures and less certainty. For physicians, it means making high-stakes decisions with incomplete data.

Predicta’s Alternative? A Blood-Based Approach

Predicta’s answer is to swap the needle in the hip for a simple blood draw. Its diagnostic platform GenoPredicta, launched in April 2025 as a Laboratory Developed Test, uses whole genome sequencing (WGS) to analyze tumor DNA and circulating cells from either bone marrow or peripheral blood. The goal: a more accurate, comprehensive view of disease biology without the invasive procedure.

GenoPredicta is designed to:

• Identify patients with high-risk multiple myeloma in line with global clinical guidelines.
• Spot mutations in BCMA and GPRC5D that can predict resistance to advanced therapies like CAR-T and bispecific antibodies.
• Deliver results equivalent to FISH from either bone marrow or blood, while also detecting additional variants that could influence therapy decisions.

A version for minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring is expected later in 2025, helping clinicians track treatment response with greater precision. By pulling information from tumor cells circulating throughout the body, the test also addresses spatial heterogeneity — something a single marrow sample often misses.

Looking ahead, Predicta plans to launch ImmunoPredicta in 2026, a platform designed to profile immune responses in multiple myeloma patients. Longer term, it hopes to extend its diagnostics into other blood cancers and autoimmune conditions.

Leadership Tied to Genomics and the Clinic

Predicta Biosciences is led by a team of experienced professionals in precision oncology and diagnostics:

• Brian McKernan, Chief Executive Officer: Appointed CEO in 2025, McKernan is a three-time biotech founder and seasoned CEO who most recently led Fluent BioSciences, which was acquired by Illumina. His previous ventures significantly contributed to the NHGRI's Human Genome Project and played vital roles in global initiatives to catalog gene mutation associations related to neurological diseases.
• Scientific Co-founders: Predicta was founded by leading cancer genomics and multiple myeloma researchers from the Broad Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute:
  
  • Irene Ghobrial, MD: Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School
  • Kenneth Anderson, MD: Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School
  • Gaddy Getz, PhD: Professor of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, co-founder of the Broad Institute and Scorpion Therapeutics
  • Romanos Sklavenitis-Pistofidis, MD, PhD: Instructor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School

The founding team includes active clinicians who treat multiple myeloma patients, providing direct clinical insights for diagnostic development.

Competitive Position and Validation

The GenoPredicta platform has already seen research use at Dana-Farber, where it has been applied to prognosis, risk stratification, and predicting therapy response—particularly for patients receiving BCMA-targeting therapies. That early validation, paired with whole-genome depth and a less invasive sampling method, gives Predicta a differentiated pitch in a crowded diagnostics landscape.

For patients, the appeal is clear: fewer bone marrow biopsies and more actionable information. For clinicians, it’s the promise of a tool that keeps pace with the complexity of modern multiple myeloma therapy.

Looking Forward

Predicta’s Series A comes at a moment when oncology is leaning heavily on precision tools to guide complex treatment decisions. If successful, the company could replace a decades-old diagnostic standard with something more humane and more informative.

With a growing market, a well-connected founding team, and strong financial backers, Predicta is positioning itself as more than a niche diagnostic company. By combining liquid biopsy with AI-powered, multi-omic analytics, it’s aiming to sit at the intersection of diagnostics and therapy selection — a space with high stakes for patients and big implications for the future of multiple myeloma care.