How precision oncology is improving care for patients with advanced cancer

Recent advancements in testing and treatment are providing greater hope for patients. Precision oncology, or personalizing cancer treatment to each individual, is helping doctors optimize care for patients across all stages of the disease.

For patients with advanced cancer, precision oncology has made a radical difference over the past decade in improving outcomes across cancer types, including lung, breast, colorectal, and prostate. Precision medicine, also known as targeted therapy or personalized medicine, uses drugs to target the specific genes and proteins, also known as biomarkers, that are causing a person’s cancer cells to grow. This personalized, biomarker-informed approach can improve progression-free survival with fewer side effects than traditional one-size-fits-all chemotherapy or immunotherapy.1-7

In order to identify these targetable biomarkers and determine if there is an appropriate therapy or clinical trial, it is necessary that doctors perform complete genomic testing (also known as comprehensive genomic profiling, biomarker testing, or molecular profiling). Performing genomic testing using a blood test does not require tissue testing, enabling potentially more patients to be matched with targeted therapies.

Our Guardant360® CDx test is the first FDA-approved blood test for complete genomic testing across all solid cancers.

Once treatment is started, another advancement in precision oncology is the ability to tailor treatment even further by not only looking at a cancer’s genomic profile, but by looking at circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), which are tiny DNA fragments shed by tumor cells into blood. Monitoring these ctDNA levels tells doctors whether a patient is responding to treatment or not, and helps them consider whether to continue, stop, or explore other treatment options. Our Guardant360 Response™ blood test predicts treatment response up to 8 weeks earlier than traditional scans.8-17

Our blood test for complete genomic testing
Our blood test for treatment response monitoring
Patients with advanced cancer who have benefitted from complete genomic testing
AJ

Complete genomic testing saved AJ’s life

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Lynn

Knowing her biomarkers helped Lynn get back to living

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