Guardant Health Expands Support for the Development of the GuardantOMNItm Assay Through New Agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Guardant Health has added Bristol-Myers Squibb Company to the group of pharmaceutical companies it is working with to develop the GuardantOMNI assay, a 500-plus-gene liquid biopsy panel designed to accelerate clinical trials and the research of targeted cancer drugs and immunotherapies.

Development of GuardantOMNI has been ongoing since January 2017 with AstraZeneca, Merck (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada), Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany (operating its healthcare business in the United States and Canada as EMD Serono), and Pfizer Inc. The assay is designed to help investigators screen patients for multiple clinical trial options with a simple blood draw, to allow low-risk, real-time monitoring of tumor response and tumor evolution, and to support analysis of tumor mutational burden for use with immunotherapy trials.

"Our agreement with Guardant Health will allow us to further explore genomic biomarkers as we advance our clinical-stage pipeline," said Bruce Car, head of translational sciences at Bristol-Myers Squibb. "Non-invasive methods of acquiring tumor DNA will provide more data, potentially leading to greater insights into patient response."

"We are excited Bristol-Myers Squibb has joined the development of GuardantOMNI," said Helmy Eltoukhy, Guardant Health Co-Founder and CEO. "Circulating-tumor DNA has the potential to help drive our understanding, drug discovery, and trial enrollment across all types of oncology programs. As an expert in immuno-oncology and translational science, Bristol-Myers Squibb is an ideal company to work with in developing GuardantOMNI."  

About Guardant Health

Guardant Health is focused on conquering cancer by using its breakthrough blood-based assays, vast data sets, and advanced analytics. Using both molecular and digital tools, Guardant Health is addressing challenges across the cancer care continuum. The company has raised more than $500 million from leading investors. Its first product, the Guardant360 assay, came to market in 2014, and is now the most widely ordered comprehensive liquid biopsy commercially available. In 2016, it announced Project LUNAR, an effort to apply Guardant Health's technology platform to early detection, recurrence monitoring, and assessing minimal residual disease. Guardant Health and Guardant360 are registered trademarks of Guardant Health, Inc.

SOURCE Guardant Health