This Biotech Startup Raised $34 Million For Urine-Based Tests To Help Diagnose Cancer

Forbes

23-05-2025

Ricky Chiu, Phase Scientific's cofounder, chairman and CEO.
With rising cancer rates necessitating new forms of diagnosis and treatment, Hong Kong-based biotech startup Phase Scientific International announced Tuesday it raised $34 million in a Series A funding round led by Asian asset management firm Value Partners Group.
Under a private equity fund of Value Partners, which was cofounded by billionaire Cheah Cheng Hye, the Series A brought Phase Scientific's total funding raised to $57 million. The round included participation from 'new healthcare-focused investors and continued support from existing global backers,' according to the company. Phase Scientific declined to disclose its current valuation.
The decade-old company's previous investors include the Gates Foundation, which provided a $100,000 grant in 2016, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which provided a total of around $1.1 million in funding between 2017 and 2018.
'We are delighted to become a partner of Phase Scientific as it rapidly grows and addresses critical unmet needs in early disease detection,' said Chuen Yan Leung, partner at Value Partners Group, in a statement about the funding round. 'Its innovative technology represents a paradigm shift, offering an unparalleled combination of clinical precision and patient-centric solutions that accelerates the development of early disease detection.'
Phase Scientific's HPV urine test.
Founded in 2015, Phase Scientific develops diagnostic products and services for cancer, infectious diseases and women's health conditions. Its range of 30 products, chiefly offered through at-home testing kit brand Indicaid, includes pregnancy tests, Covid-19 rapid antigen tests, and sexual health tests. To date, the company says it's distributed more than 100 million tests in over 30 countries, with Covid-19 tests comprising the majority of its business.
The fresh capital will go towards research and development (R&D) and commercialization efforts for its urine-based diagnostics. Phase Scientific's proprietary sample preparation technology, called Phasify, can amplify biomarkers, or biological molecules, in urine to detect a range of medical conditions. By concentrating and purifying urine, Phasify is capable of capturing over ten times more target molecules than existing tests regarded as the 'gold standard' for urine samples, according to the company.
Of particular interest to Phase Scientific is using urine to test for human papillomavirus (HPV), the cause of almost all cases of cervical cancer globally, per World Health Organization (WHO) statistics. In 2023, Phase Scientific unveiled what it described as the world's first urine-based HPV test, which it claimed could detect HPV with 98.1% accuracy. Priced at around HK$880 ($112), the test has received approval in the U.S. to screen for HPV, but not for cervical cancer itself.
'Everyone in our industry wants to crack urine to test for HPV, because it's such a huge market,' says Ricky Chiu, cofounder, chairman and CEO of Phase Scientific, in a video interview with Forbes. HPV infections account for an estimated 690,000 cases of cancer worldwide each year, according to the European Cancer Organization, citing statistics published in the Lancet Global Health journal – but many infections are easily preventable through vaccinations and screenings.
Urine may offer a more convenient alternative to widely adopted clinical methods of testing for HPV. For women, these include cervical smears, commonly known as pap smears, in which healthcare practitioners vaginally insert a clamp-like tool called a speculum and then use a swab to extract cells from the cervix. There are no standardized tests for men, but options include penile swabs and anal swabs.
A gynecologist holds up a speculum during an examination.
'A lot of testing is still being done through pap smears, which a lot of women find uncomfortable, unhygienic, and are embarrassed to kind of do,' says Maaike Steinebach, founder and CEO at Hong Kong-based women's health consultancy firm FemTech Future, in a phone interview. 'The fact that we now have a urine test that we can actually use to test in a very simple, non-invasive way, I think, is great to create more options.'
To Chiu, one edge Phase Scientific has over potential competitors is its 'cross-border setup' that allows it to tap into global R&D and commercialization opportunities. With offices in California and across mainland China, the company was originally spun out of the bioengineering program of the University of California, Los Angeles, where Chiu received a PhD. The majority of its 180 employees are based in Hong Kong, a key market alongside the U.S., the company says.
While Phase Scientific aims to initiate the 'world's largest clinical studies in urine HPV,' says Chiu, it also plans to eventually target 'more systemic' types of cancer.
'Lung cancer, breast cancer, these are the cancers that no one else is able to crack by using a urine test as an early cancer detection,' he adds. 'Of course, it would take a long time to go through our R&D, to demonstrate feasibility…so that would be our long-term vision.'
Around one in five people will develop cancer in their lifetime, according to the WHO's International Agency for Research (IARC), which operates the Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) database. In an announcement last February, the IARC reported an estimated 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million deaths in 2022. Asia had the highest burden of cancer that year, accounting for 49.2% of new cases and 56.1% of deaths, per GLOBOCAN figures.
An aging population and increasing exposure to risk factors, such as air pollution, tobacco use, alcohol consumption, and obesity, have spurred a 'rapidly growing global cancer burden,' with an estimated 35 million new cancer cases predicted in 2050, a 77% increase from 2022, the IARC added.
The increasing need to detect cancers early on, along with monitoring potential recurrence, has spurred scientific research into non-invasive cancer diagnostics. This field includes liquid biopsy, referring to techniques that process bodily fluids such as blood, urine, and saliva for different disease biomarkers.
Aside from Phase Scientific, another rising liquid biopsy company is Singapore-based precision medicine developer Lucence, backed by billionaire Min-Liang Tan. Cofounded in 2016 by Tan's brother, Min-Han Tan, Lucence secured Medicare coverage for its cancer-detecting blood test in early 2023 and made the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list that year.