NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Guardant Health said today that its Guardant360 liquid biopsy assay will be used in a large ongoing trial organized by the National Cancer Center Hospital East (NCCE) in Kashiwa, Japan.
The study is matching patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer, including gastric and colorectal cancer, to novel therapies that target specific gene alterations. The liquid biopsy arm, called GOZILA (Guardant Originates in ZIpangu Liquid biopsy Arrival) will initially use Guardant360 to test 200 advanced CRC patients whose cancer has progressed after standard treatment with anti-EGFR therapy.
Those who test positive for amplification in the ERBB2 gene will be enrolled in a clinical trial exploring the effectiveness of changing to an anti-ERBB2 combination targeted therapy with trastuzumab and pertuzumab. The study will then expand to include 2,000 patients with a variety of GI cancers and treatment arms.
The study is part of a larger effort in Japan, called SCRUM-Japan GI-SCREEN, to assess the genomic profile of patients with advanced cancer in their GI tracts and match them to associated targeted therapies.
"Tumors that metastasize from the GI tract can be especially difficult to access, making tissue specimen collection challenging. Through a simple blood draw, we can help match these patients to the experimental treatments being studied by NCCE Japan," Guardant Health CEO Helmy Eltoukhy said in a statement.