Guardant Health and Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) launch research collaboration to study connection between cancer biomarkers and immunotherapy treatment response | BioSpace

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• - Guardant Health, Inc. (Nasdaq: GH), a leading precision oncology company, and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), a network of the largest concentration of immuno-oncology (IO) expertise in the world, today announced a research collaboration agreement to study the correlation between molecular cancer biomarkers and patient response to immunotherapy treatment across more than 14 different types of cancer. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230425005470/en/ Under the agreement, Guardant Health will analyze patient blood samples from PICI’s RADIOHEAD (Resistance Drivers for Immuno-Oncology Patients Interrogated by Harmonized Molecular Datasets) prospective study of 1,200 individuals on standard-of-care immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment regimens in community hospitals. The testing, which will be conducted with GuardantINFINITY, will provide a multi-dimensional analysis of each patient’s tumor response based on both genomic and epigenomic profiling. The study will use blood samples drawn at multiple points during the treatment regimen and will assess the connection between the presence of specific cancer biomarkers and real-world clinical outcomes, including survival and immune-related adverse events. “By breaking down barriers and forging deep collaboration, PICI can accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies and turn all cancers into curable diseases,” said Tarak Mody, PhD, chief business officer at PICI. “This mission-focused collaboration with Guardant Health aims to identify the molecular drivers of treatment response in clinical practice, provide significant learnings in PD1 resistance mechanisms, and serve as a valuable resource to the PICI research network for biomarker discovery, target validation, and clinical trial design.” The project marks the first real-world immuno-oncology study collaboration for Guardant Health and will enable the company to significantly expand its access to real-world outcomes data for immunotherapies correlated to specific biomarkers, cancer type and stage. “The collaborative study with PICI is an excellent opportunity for us to explore the value of genomic and epigenomic tumor profiling in real-world immuno-oncology therapy settings,” said Helmy Eltoukhy, Guardant Health chairman and co-CEO. “The study will generate deeper insights about the tumor microenvironment and its response to therapy, which will enable us to respond to cancer evolution faster and, eventually, modify immunotherapy treatment paradigms for better patient outcomes.” Guardant Health and PICI intend to begin publishing data generated by the study later in 2023.