Natera has acquired liquid biopsy startup Foresight Diagnostics in a deal valued at up to $450 million, strengthening its push into ultra-sensitive molecular residual disease (MRD) detection, particularly in lymphoma. The all-stock transaction includes $275 million upfront and up to $175 million tied to future revenue and reimbursement milestones.
The acquisition brings Foresight’s PhasED-Seq technology into Natera’s Signatera platform. Unlike conventional liquid biopsy approaches, PhasED-Seq requires detection of multiple mutations on the same DNA molecule, a design intended to sharply reduce sequencing errors and enable detection of circulating tumor DNA at extremely low levels. Foresight claims the method is up to 100 times more sensitive than first-generation approaches.