Increased accessibility to Guardant Health’s liquid biopsy testing will enable clinicians to personalize treatments more accurately for patients with late-stage cancer

Guardant Health, Inc. (Nasdaq: GH), a leading precision oncology company, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, one of the United Kingdom’s (UK) leading cancer research organizations, have agreed to enter into a partnership to establish an in-house liquid biopsy testing service using Guardant Health’s industry-leading proprietary digital sequencing platform.

The service is expected to become operational at the end of 2022 and will be available for clinical research and clinical care. This will be the first UK hospital for Guardant Health to house a dedicated liquid biopsy testing facility for cancer diagnostics. 

“We are delighted to announce this partnership with Guardant Health, establishing a state-of-the-art liquid biopsy testing facility. In a clinical diagnostic setting, it will provide many of our patients with more rapid access to bespoke diagnostic testing, leading to earlier, faster, and more accurate diagnosis, along with targeted treatment selection and monitoring,” said Professor Michael Hubank, Director of Clinical Genomics (Research) at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. “The opening of this service will also allow us to significantly increase our capacity for research using liquid biopsies. Bringing expanded capacity for genomic testing, the facility will help us identify more people with cancer for clinical trials based on targeted treatments, improving outcomes for patients across the UK and beyond.”

It is estimated that there were around 375,000 new cancer cases in the UK from 2016-2018¹, with approximately 166,000 cancer deaths in the UK from 2016-2018.¹ Guardant Health’s tests are used by oncologists around the world to guide treatment decisions across solid tumor cancers, and by pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers in clinical trials to accelerate precision medicine drug development. Guardant Health has achieved CE Mark and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for its Guardant360® CDx assay for tumor mutation profiling, also known as comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP), in patients with any solid cancerous tumor.

“We are pleased to announce this partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, which will enable clinicians to quickly and accurately detect relevant tumor alterations with a blood test to guide personalized treatment plans and provide researchers with diagnostic tools to support clinical research and innovation,” said Helmy Eltoukhy, Guardant Health Co-CEO. “This partnership further advances our goal of ensuring all patients with cancer have access to the latest innovations to inform their treatment management to enable the best possible outcomes.” 

References

Cancer Research UK. Cancer Statistics for the UK. https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics-for-the-uk. Accessed online October 28, 2021.

About Guardant Health

Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on helping conquer cancer globally through use of its proprietary tests, vast data sets and advanced analytics. The Guardant Health oncology platform leverages capabilities to drive commercial adoption, improve patient clinical outcomes and lower healthcare costs across all stages of the cancer care continuum. Guardant Health has commercially launched Guardant360®, Guardant360 CDx, Guardant360 TissueNext™, Guardant360 Response™, and GuardantOMNI® tests for advanced stage cancer patients, and Guardant Reveal™ for early-stage cancer patients. These tests fuel development of its LUNAR screening program, which aims to address the needs of asymptomatic individuals eligible for cancer screening.

About The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust

The Royal Marsden opened its doors in 1851 as the world’s first hospital dedicated to cancer diagnosis, treatment, research and education. Today, together with its academic partner, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), it is the largest and most comprehensive cancer centre in Europe seeing and treating over 59,000 NHS and private patients every year. It is a centre of excellence with an international reputation for groundbreaking research and pioneering the very latest in cancer treatments and technologies. The Royal Marsden, with the ICR, is the only National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Cancer. This supports pioneering research work carried out over a number of different cancer themes. The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity raises money solely to support The Royal Marsden, a world-leading cancer centre. It ensures Royal Marsden nurses, doctors and research teams can provide the very best care and develop life-saving treatments, which are used across the UK and around the world. From funding state-of-the-art equipment and ground-breaking research, to creating the very best patient environments, The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity will never stop looking for ways to improve the lives of people affected by cancer.