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Guardant Health is one of the canonical case studies on how to design a diagnostics business that can potentially generate drug-like economics. With the basis of monitoring cancer development across every stage, Guardant is transitioning over time to developing new medicines likely with a partner. Whereas most diagnostics companies suffer from mediocre economics over time as competition increases mainly because the moats of diagnostics businesses are not strong other than scale (i.e. Quest, Danaher), Guardant is using the model to garner economic deals similar to a drug company. With the underlying platform mapping out patients’ entire experience with cancer, Guardant could potentially version new medicines.
Founded in 2012 by Helmy Eltoukhy, Guardant has been driven by scientific integrity. Eltoukhy was originally an electrical engineer who started doing work on sequencing at the Stanford Genome Technology Center ultimately co-founding Avantome, which was acquired by Illumina about a year after founding. With this exit and some experience at Illumina, Eltoukhy founded Guardant with an even larger vision.
Key findings
- Success in preventative diagnostics and therapies is driven by validating…
