Natera is looking to grow its portfolio of tools to detect the recurrence of cancer with a deal to acquire Foresight Diagnostics, the Stanford University spinout and developer of blood tests for tracking minimal residual disease, or MRD.
Natera announced it has closed the transaction, with a price tag totaling $275 million upfront plus, as up to $175 million in future milestones tied to revenue and reimbursement coverage.
“This acquisition reinforces Natera’s position at the forefront of precision oncology,” Natera CEO Steve Chapman said in a statement. “Foresight’s phased variant technology and leadership in lymphoma complement Natera’s strong capabilities in personalized MRD testing, improving the value we can deliver to patients, clinicians, biopharma partners and the broader healthcare system.”
Foresight, which also maintains its own CLIA-registered laboratory, has developed ultrasensitive tests that capture cancer DNA circulating in the bloodstream, which Natera said have demonstrated detection rates below 1 part-per-million—including in multiple solid tumors as well as certain lymphomas.
Previous clinical data have illustrated Foresight’s ability to detect relapses of large B-cell lymphoma up to 200 days before it would be detected on a standard-of-care PET/CT scan, according to the company.
Meanwhile, in the coming days at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, Foresight is slated to present multiple lymphoma studies of its Clarity tests for minimal residual disease and tracking patient responses to investigational therapies in early-stage clinical trials.
Foresight and Stanford were previously the subject of a trade secrets lawsuit filed by Roche, which accused the spinout’s founders of employing technologies at the heart of Roche's previous acquisition deal for Capp Medical, which included the genomic detection of cancer recurrence.
The parties buried the legal hatchet this past August, with Roche obtaining a limited, non-exclusive licensing agreement to Foresight’s tech in non-Hodgkin lymphoma in return for ending the litigation. Foresight said that Stanford would retain the intellectual property rights to its DNA-based approach, dubbed PhasED-Seq, and that it would continue to hold the exclusive license to patents spanning all uses and geographies.
Last month, Natera reported revenues of $592.2 million for 2025’s third quarter, a gain of 34.7% over the same period last year. That was driven by the processing of about 893,600 diagnostic tests, including about 211,000 cancer tests—with the latter representing a 53.9% year-over-year jump, including gains for its Signatera personalized MRD tests that search for a genomic signature tied to the patient’s own tumor.
The company also posted a quarterly net loss of $87.5 million, compared to a loss of $31.6 million during the same period a year ago.