# Valar Labs

- Link: https://100xfounder.com/startup/valar-labs/
- Published: 2024-01-01T00:00:00+05:30
- Author: Ishaan Vardhan

Valar Labs is a cancer diagnostics company that uses artificial intelligence to 
help doctors choose treatments. Its tests analyse digitised images of the tissue
slides that hospitals already prepare when they diagnose a tumour, a field the company
calls computational histology AI. From those images its models estimate how likely
a patient’s cancer is to respond to a given therapy, or how aggressive it is likely
to be.

Its first product, Vesta Bladder, is aimed at bladder cancer. Valar Labs’ site says
it is the only bladder cancer diagnostic that predicts response to BCG, the standard
first-line immunotherapy, using routine histology. According to the company’s Series
A announcement, Vesta flags patients who are unlikely to benefit from BCG and stratifies
their risk of recurrence and progression; it was developed and validated on more
than 1,000 patients across four continents and presented at the American Urological
Association’s 2024 meeting. The site also lists Vesta Prostate, with published validation
work in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer using phase 3 trial data, and
a product called Vitara. Tests are processed through a CLIA-certified laboratory
in Houston, Texas, and doctors order them online.

The company was founded by Anirudh Joshi, Viswesh Krishna and Damir Vrabac, who 
met in 2020 in Andrew Ng’s machine-learning group at Stanford, according to the 
accelerator Pear VC, whose PearX S21 programme they joined. It raised a $4.15 million
seed round led by a16z Bio + Health, then a $22 million Series A in May 2024 co-
led by DCVC and a16z, with Pear participating, for about $26 million in total. Valar
Labs also works with pharmaceutical companies on research programmes.

Valar Labs does not publish prices; tests are ordered by clinicians through its 
portal.

_This page is research, not medical advice or a review. Treatment decisions belong
with a patient’s oncologist. Facts come from the sources listed below._