Guardant Health Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Bellwether Bio

Guardant Health (NASDAQ:GH) has announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Bellwether Bio with the transaction expected to close in April 2019.

As quoted in the press release:

The Bellwether Bio team will join Guardant Health to further advance its early detection product pipeline.  The team includes Jay Shendure, MD, PhD, who will act as a scientific advisor to Guardant Health. His lab’s work on the epigenomics of cell-free DNA, specifically with respect to nucleosome positioning and fragmentomics, was described in a landmark Cell publication in 2016 co-authored by Bellwether Bio CTO Matthew Snyder, PhD.

“We are excited to welcome the Bellwether team and believe they will enhance our product pipeline as we seek to expand precision oncology to earlier stages of disease,” said Guardant Health Co-Founder and President AmirAli Talasaz, PhD.  “Our early research has shown the strong potential impact of incorporating biologically-relevant epigenomic information on the clinical performance of blood tests for early stage cancer detection.”

At the AACR annual meeting in Atlanta on March 31, 3pm, investigators from Guardant Health and the Samsung Medical Center will report results from a pilot study (abstract #916) of Guardant’s LUNAR assay in early stage cancer. The study demonstrates that addition of epigenomics to the assay can potentially lead to significant improvements in sensitivity for stage I and II colorectal cancer.

“Guardant has demonstrated remarkable progress toward its goal,” Bellwether Bio CEO Rahul Shendure said. “I am proud of the groundbreaking work the Bellwether team has accomplished to date and believe that joining Guardant’s efforts will speed their path even further.”

Click here to read the full press release.