February 10, 2016 | Grail has a CEO with a compelling story and a high tech background. The Illumina spinoff has named Jeff Huber, formerly of Google, as chief executive. Grail's goal is a liquid biopsy cancer test--ideally a standard-of-care blood test that would alert physicians to circulating cancerous cells long before the patient is symptomatic. The test, if it existed, might have saved the life of Laura Huber, Jeff's wife, who died in November of aggressive colon cancer.
Grail has a nice foundation of funding. The company has raised more than $100 million at launch from ARCH Venture Partners, Bezos Expeditions, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Illumina itself, which remains the majority owner. But in order to succeed, Huber and Grail will need to navigate both the biology and the regulatory landscape. In an
interview with Forbes' Matthew Herper, Huber didn't lay out a game plan. “There’s lots of hard work we have to do at GRAIL,” he admitted to Herper. "But if we can get it right, it’s clear to me that’s the most obvious path for being able to save millions of lives, and to spare both the patients themselves, but also friends and family from the experience that Laura had to go through.”