Guardant Health makes commitment to share expertise and data to advance Blood Profiling Atlas, part of White House Cancer Moonshot

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Guardant Health announced today that it will contribute data from 500 advanced lung-cancer patients tested with Guardant360 to the Blood Profiling Atlas, a new initiative and part of the White House's Cancer Moonshot.

The goal of the Blood Profiling Atlas, one of the Cancer Moonshot Task Force recommendations introduced today at the White House by Vice President Biden, is to create an open and well-curated database of cancer genomic profiling information derived from blood samples.

"We are proud to answer the Vice President's call and commit to sharing our data as part of this effort," said AmirAli Talasaz, PhD, Guardant Health's co-founder and President. "Our goal, since we started Guardant Health, was to decode cancer to conquer cancer. Having built the world's largest database of advanced-cancer profiling information, we are now in a position to use this information to help fulfill the Moonshot."

Guardant360, the gold standard for comprehensive liquid biopsies, is a 70-gene panel that can identify all four major classes of somatic genomic alterations associated with cancer from a single blood draw. Guardant360 has been used by thousands of oncologists and top cancer centers to profile nearly 30,000 patients with advanced cancer. Cancer has historically been undergenotyped for reasons associated with the cost, risks, and pain involved in traditional invasive biopsies. A growing body of evidence, presented at ASCO and published in top scientific journals, has demonstrated the clinical utility of Guardant360, which gives doctors and patients a non-invasive alternative.

"We are particularly excited to see the Task Force's interest in liquid biopsy," said Guardant Health's Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Helmy Eltoukhy, PhD. "After our participation at the Cancer Moonshot summit in June, we came away convinced we could play a productive role in this ambitious effort. We fully support the creation of resources like the Blood Profiling Atlas. We believe they will accelerate the clinical adoption of less invasive methods of genotyping and help more patients get the treatment that's right for them."

About the Cancer Moonshot
During his 2016 State of the Union Address, President Obama called on Vice President Biden to lead a new, national Cancer Moonshot, focused on making a decade's worth of progress in preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer in five years - ultimately striving to end cancer as we know it. A Presidential Memorandum on January 28, 2016 established the Cancer Moonshot Task Force.

After meeting with experts across the country and the world, Vice President Biden identified areas of focus for the Cancer Moonshot -- based on barriers to progress and opportunities for improving patient outcomes - and announced a first wave of accomplishments at the Cancer Moonshot Summit on June 29, 2016 at Howard University in Washington, DC. On Monday, October 17, Vice President Biden is releasing the final report of the Cancer Moonshot Task Force, along with his own Executive Findings after traveling to many of the major nerve centers in the cancer community. He will also unveil a new set of Federal actions, private sector actions, and collaborative partnerships to further advance the goals of the Cancer Moonshot Task Force. More information on the Cancer Moonshot can be found here.

About Guardant Health
Guardant Health, headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., is focused on developing breakthrough diagnostics that can transform cancer into a manageable disease. Guardant Health was founded in 2012 by a team of entrepreneurs with expertise in next-generation sequencing, single-cell genomics, and cancer diagnostics. The company has raised more than $200 million from leading venture capital firms. Its first product, Guardant360, came to market in 2014, and is now the most validated and sensitive comprehensive liquid biopsy commercially available.

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