Biotechnology company Freenome said on Tuesday it had raised $300 million in a late-stage funding round led by Perceptive Advisors and hedge fund RA Capital Management. The Series D round also saw participation from existing investors T. Rowe Price Associates, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Bain Capital Life Sciences, Andreessen Horowitz"s a16z Life Sciences Growth Fund and Janus Henderson Investors. The funding round brings the total capital raised by the San Francisco, California-based company to $800 million. Freenome, founded in 2012, operates a platform which uses a routine blood test to detect cancer in its earliest stages. It intends to use the funds raised to advance its colorectal cancer (CRC) screening test and for expansion of its multiomics platform to other types of cancers. Several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies have raised fresh capital or filed to go public as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed healthcare to take center stage. Earlier on Tuesday, biosimilar maker Alvotech said it plans to list in New York by merging with a blank-check company backed by Oaktree Capital in a deal valued at $2.25 billion. read more Freenome has formed partnerships with multiple pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions to expand research and development of its platform including biotech firm Qiagen NV and Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, according to its website Earlier this month, it announced a collaboration with German medical technology firm Siemens Healthineers to detect early breast cancer through blood to augment existing imaging technologies. Reporting by Manya Saini and Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.