Sergey Young is on a mission to "extend healthy lifespans" by investing in longevity breakthroughs. Last year, the venture capitalist established a $100m fund investing in technologies with the potential to improve healthy long living.

With Freenome recently scoring $160m in new financing, the San Francisco-based start-up is poised to ramp up development of its cancer-detection platform. Medtech Insight hears from the firm's CEO and co-founder, Gabe Otte, about the company's next steps.

Liquid biopsy is a rapidly developing noninvasive technology for the early detection of cancer. Multiple companies have entered clinical testing, using mostly blood to detect circulating tumor cells and/or circulating tumor DNA. But urine and even cerebral spinal fluid are promising liquids too. Regardless of the fluid, testing costs a fraction of a traditional, invasive tissue biopsy and offers much quicker results.

The potential to use a simple blood test to guide physicians in monitoring cancer therapies, detect early cancers, serve as a companion diagnostic to guide targeted therapeutics and predict the likely course or outcomes of disease in patients has spurred a lot of interest and innovation. Here's a look at emerging companies hoping to make an impact, including insights from interviews conducted with C-Level visitors at the recent Liquid Biopsy Conference in San Francisco. This is the second of a two-part series focusing on the global liquid biopsy market.