Liquid Biopsy Test to Find All Cancers Is Out of Reach for 2019
After early hype and promise of a liquid biopsy test by 2019, talk of a so-called “pan-typic” cancer test has since quieted down.
(Bloomberg) -- What if a simple blood test could tell if you had cancer? Grail Inc. -- founded by Illumina Inc. and backed by both Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates -- has been targeting just that, but after some early hype and the promise of a liquid biopsy test by 2019, talk of a so-called “pan-typic” cancer test has since quieted down.
New details from a Grail study were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago last Friday. Doctors and analysts believe it’s still early days.
Canaccord analyst Mark Massaro called Grail’s results mixed. “Lots of questions remain,” he wrote in a note to clients. A 55% overall detection rate for multiple cancer types no matter what stage looks too low to be used by doctors and too uncertain to secure reimbursement from insurers, he said.
“Grail may have to redirect its ‘pan-cancer screening’ strategy and take more targeted approaches,” Massaro said. Guardant Health is already planning its own targeted approach, recently announcing plans to enroll more than 10,000 patients in a study later this year to screen for colon cancer.
For liquid biopsy, though, a simple and affordable solution is probably best, says Joydeep Goswami, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.’s president of next-generation sequencing and oncology.
The Guardant360 test that profiles existing cancers and helps guide doctors to finding the right treatments costs roughly $7,000, but the company’s Lunar test that’s under development aims at early cancer detection and measuring the chance of recurrence for less than $1000, Helmy Eltoukhy the company’s chief executive said from the sidelines of the meeting.
Exact Sciences Corp. -- the maker of the stool-based colon cancer screening tool Cologuard -- has also been releasing details of its plans in the space. Kevin Conroy, Exact’s chief executive, plans to target some of the most common cancers while holding down testing costs. Exact also recently put its money behind Thrive Earlier Detection Corp., another private company that’s been developing its own test, CancerSEEK.
Cancer doctors who SVB Leerink analyst Puneet Souda talked with at ASCO agreed that it’s too soon for comprehensive early screening for all cancers. But eventually, Guardant’s estimate for an $18 billion market “is likely to be proven conservative,” Souda wrote. He’s previously estimated the combined market for early detection, as well as recurrence monitoring, at more than $30 billion.
It’s still too early to pick one clear winner and, in any case, the market is big enough for more than one success, JPMorgan analyst Tycho Peterson said. The outcome awaits more data over the next year -- numbers that promise to decide whether patients ever get that single early cancer detection test after all.
To contact the reporter on this story: Cristin Flanagan in New York at cflanagan1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Scott Schnipper, Dave Liedtka
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