NEW YORK – Guardant Health said Tuesday that it has inked a research collaboration agreement with the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) to study the correlation between molecular cancer biomarkers and patient response to immunotherapy treatment across more than 14 different types of cancer.
Under the agreement, Guardant will analyze patient blood samples from PICI's RADIOHEAD (Resistance Drivers for Immuno-Oncology Patients Interrogated by Harmonized Molecular Datasets) prospective study in a cohort of 1,200 individuals receiving standard-of-care immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment in community hospitals.
The company will use its GuardantINFINITY combined genomic and epigenomic profiling assay to test the samples at multiple timepoints during treatment, providing a multidimensional analysis of patients' tumor response, which researchers can then compare to real-world clinical outcomes, including survival and immune-related adverse events.
According to Guardant, the project is its first real-world immune-oncology effort. Co-CEO Helmy Eltoukhy called the collaboration an excellent opportunity to explore the value of genomic and epigenomic tumor profiling in real-world immuno-oncology therapy settings.
"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," Tarak Mody, PICI's chief business officer, said in a statement.
The partners expect to begin publishing their first data from the project later in 2023.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.