Inside the Diagnostics Industry: Guardant Health Takes Aim at Exact Sciences’ Leadership of Colorectal Cancer Market

Colorectal cancer is a key segment of the U.S. and world diagnostics market that generates billions of dollars in test revenues per year and is projected to grow at an annual rate of nearly 6 percent. Although the space is crowded, Exact Sciences is one of if not the leading firms in the market, particularly the colorectal minimal residual disease segment (MRD). However, in recent months, one firm has made particularly aggressive moves to challenge Exact Sciences for share of the MRD market: Guardant Health. Exact Sciences’ Acquisition of Ashion Analytics On Feb. 17, 2021, Exact Sciences announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Ashion Analytics from the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) for an undisclosed price. Ashion is a CLIA-certified and CAP-accredited sequencing laboratory whose genomic testing assets will bolster Exact’s efforts to enhance its Cologuard product and develop new precision oncology diagnostics for MRD and other cancers. Those Ashion assets include the GEM ExTra comprehensive cancer test, as well as whole-exome, matched germline and transcriptome sequencing capabilities. The Ashion acquisition, which is scheduled to close in the second quarter, is just one element of Exact’s larger strategic collaboration with TGen. A month earlier, the Wisconsin-based molecular […]