March 22, 2024
AmirAli Talasaz, Co-CEO, Guardant Health
Rebooting Approaches To Fighting The War On Cancer
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Cancer is not an easy topic to discuss. It is a disease that takes over 10 million lives a year—600 thousand of those in the U.S. alone. To anyone who has gone through it or has loved ones who have fought cancer, it helps to know that you are not alone in that fight. Hundreds of organizations around the globe are focused on researching cancer from different angle—in the hopes of helping people through all stages of the process.
One of those organizations working on discovering easier and less intensive ways to detect cancer is Guardant Health. They are a precision oncology company focused on reducing those numbers across all stages—from screening to find cancer and monitoring for recurrences in early-stages to helping doctors select treatments for patients with more advanced-stages. The half a billion-dollar public company has been making strides in cancer screening accuracy and accessibility through blood tests versus biopsies.
We invited the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Guardant Health, AmirAli Talasaz, for an episode of The Reboot Chronicles, to unpack how their simple blood tests could be the best and easiest way to fight the war on cancer.
New Approaches To Testing And Detection
Guardant is pioneering a blood test that can indicate whether or not someone has colon and other types of cancer and is anticipating FDA approvals. From there the goal is to develop those blood tests so that they can be used to detect different types of cancer. Advancements in detection like this are vital as, AmirAli puts it, “If you can detect cancers in [the] early stages when they are localized, the long-term survival of patients would be more than 90%.” In comparison, that 90% drops to a heartbreaking 14% when patients are diagnosed at advanced stages.
AI Versus Cancer
It should be no shock that AI has joined this battle and according to AmirAli has been making a big impact. Guardant Health has been using AI to help parse all the data coming from their research on the “genomic properties in blood cells and the materials in blood” to gain a better insight into the “Biology of cancer.” On top of assisting in parsing a large amount of information, AI is also saving scientists hours upon hours of sitting at a desk writing reports—giving them more time to research.
The Five To Thirty Year Plan
Guardant is working on making a blood test screening that can detect colorectal cancer. Moving forward, when this screening gets through the FDA there are many potential application paths ahead—with other types of cancer that this testing can be adapted to detect. Expanding further, AmirAli also notes that through these tests they “can find biomarkers which are associated with neurological diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons”—hopefully making those diseases easier to catch in the future. In addition, there are innovations being made from the data from these tests that could bring rise to new therapies, gene editing and even potential cancer vaccinations. A very enticing phase to say the least, in fighting the war on cancer.
