Diagnostics

With $360M in new financing, Guardant Health prepares to sequence one million cancer patients

Guardant Health has unveiled an ambitious five-year plan to sequence tumor DNA from one million cancer patients. Dubbed "Guardant 1 million," the push will be financed with $360 million in new financing from a broad syndicate of investors.

blood sample in test tube with DNA code

Guardant Health has raised the stakes in the liquid biopsy cancer space.

On Thursday, the Redwood City, California-based company unveiled an ambitious plan to sequence tumor DNA from one million cancer patients over five years.

Dubbed “Guardant 1 million,” the push will be financed with $360 million in new financing. It brings the total raised by Guardant to over $500 million.

The funding was led by the investment arm of Tokyo-based telecommunications and Internet company Softbank Group, represented by DLA Piper. T. Rowe Price, Associates and Singapore’s state-owned investment group Temasek also participated, alongside existing investors Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, OrbiMed, and 8VC.

Liquid biopsies have picked up steam in the last few years, both as a research tool and for the development of sophisticated diagnostics.

Guardant is far from the only company trying to capitalize on the field’s potential.

Illumina spin-out Grail is undoubtedly the biggest hitter, having already raised over $1 billion. According to CEO Jeff Huber, Grail is developing “high-intensity sequencing” tools designed to detect the faintest cancer signatures in the blood, including circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). In April, it launched a 120,000-person breast cancer study, dubbed STRIVE, to begin collecting the necessary data. An earlier Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study enrolled 10,000 patients; 7,000 with cancer and 3,000 controls. More large-scale studies are reportedly in the planning phase.

San Francisco, California-based Freenome, on the other hand, is taking a software-heavy, machine-learning approach to detect cancer in its earliest stages. The team hopes to draw on a range of biological signals in the blood, from relevant analytes to markers of the immune system’s response to tumor cells.

Other companies, such as San Diego, California’s Epic Sciences, are developing liquid biopsy tests that can inform which cancer treatment will work best for each individual. Foundation Medicine has a similar test already on the market, which uses ctDNA captured through a blood test to identify the 62 most druggable cancer-related genes.

Guardant Health also has a test on the market, Guardant360, for advanced cancer diagnoses. According to a company statement, it has now been used more than 35,000 times, making it the most widely used comprehensive liquid biopsy.

As part of Thursday’s announcement, Guardant and SoftBank unveiled a joint venture designed to expand commercialization of the test in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa; regions where more than 7.8 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year.

Guardant’s ultimate mission, however, has always been to move into early cancer detection. In 2016, it launched Project LUNAR, which seeks to apply the information gleaned through the use of Guardant360. When combined with the new Guardant 1 million initiative, the team hopes to develop the tools required to find the proverbial needle in the haystack of previously undiagnosed cancer patient’s blood.

Photo: jxfzsy, Getty Images 

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