Guardant Health's Adoption Is Skyrocketing
On a mission to conquer cancer with data, Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH) is changing the way oncologists make diagnoses.
The company's "blood-first" paradigm uses a small sample of a patient's blood to detect the presence of circulating tumor DNA, or fragments of a cancerous tumor's DNA moving through the bloodstream. This approach is much simpler than traditional biopsies, which take a tissue specimen directly from the cancerous tumor and often cause unwanted side effects. The results of Guardant's liquid biopsies are also ready much faster, an asset in a field where time is of the essence.
Guardant's focus today is on advanced-stage diagnostics, but its future opportunity could be in detecting earlier-stage cancer. Catching cancer as early as possible is important: People with lung cancer have an average five-year survival rate of only 5% if diagnosed in stage 4, but greater than 70% if diagnosed in stage 1.
Quelle Fool.com
