Personalis, Inc., the leading provider of advanced medical exome and genome sequencing and interpretation services, announced today the closing of a $22 million Series B financing.

'This financing brings the total investment in Personalis to over $42M, the relative scale of which gives us a significant advantage over most new companies now entering this space,' said Personalis CEO John West. 'We will use this to further build on our technological lead, expand our product offerings, scale our operations, and expand our commercial team. Since our first customer purchase order 13 months ago, we have received more than $14M in customer orders, for the sequencing and analysis of over 7,000 human samples. These include whole genome and exome sequencing. Well over two thirds of these samples have been ordered with our new ACE (Accuracy and Content Enhanced) TechnologyTM. We have delivered data and analysis related to both rare Mendelian diseases and cancer. Customers include pharmaceutical and integrated healthcare companies, as well as academic and government research laboratories. We are now building sequencing and computational infrastructure to handle projects of over 10,000 samples. Commercially, Personalis now has direct sales representatives and a field based support team for North America, has established a UK subsidiary and hired the initial European sales team. With this financing, we expect to expand our commercial team further, including in Asia.'

Series B investment was lead by Abingworth, which significantly increased its stake in the company. 'We saw the tremendous progress being made by Personalis on both the technical and commercial fronts, and we felt it was a great opportunity to increase our investment,' said Abingworth partner Dr. Jonathan MacQuitty, who will continue to serve as Personalis' chairman.

The company noted that all of its Series A investors participated in this round of financing, including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Mohr Davidow Ventures. Major participation in the round also came from new investors at Wellington Shields & Co. LLC of New York. Wellington Shields primarily invests in public companies and it has a track record of investment success in DNA sequencing, having been one of the first public investors in Solexa.

About Personalis

Personalis provides researchers and clinicians accurate DNA sequencing and interpretation of human genomes. We support researchers engaging in case-control, family-based, or proband-only genomic studies of disease, pharmacogenomics, and cancer. Our ACE (Accuracy and Content Enhanced) Technology™ supplements a standard exome or genome, substantially increasing its medically-relevant coverage and accuracy. Personalis builds on this enhanced sequencing foundation with innovative algorithms and proprietary databases for alignment, variant calling, annotation, and analysis. Through this comprehensive approach, we provide genomic data and interpretation of the highest accuracy. Personalis' laboratory achieved CLIA validation in January 2013. (www.personalis.com)