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Oncology-focused biotech company Guardant Health is partnering with AI drug development company Zephyr AI to combine AI and machine learning technologies and multimodal molecular data to advance cancer biomarkers for drug development, response monitoring and therapies.
Guardant Health is a precision medicine company that offers blood and tissue tests, AI analytics and real-world data with the goal to help detect cancer earlier, monitor for recurrence in early stages and support treatment selection for patients.
Zephyr AI is a precision medicine company that uses enterprise-scale real-world data and proprietary algorithms that use clinical and biological information to help with drug discovery and diagnostics.
The companies will combine their offerings to help speed up cancer research for biopharma partners.
"This collaboration represents the convergence of unmatched real-world data, leading-edge diagnostics and cutting-edge machine learning to enable more precise, scalable, and impactful oncology solutions," Allen Chao, CEO of Zephyr AI, said in a statement.
"By working together, Guardant Health and Zephyr AI can supercharge discovery and development needed to transform cancer treatment and deliver on the promise of personalized medicines for cancer patients."
THE LARGER TREND
Last year, Zephyr AI closed a $111 million Series A financing round with participation from Revolution Growth, Eli Lilly and Company, EPIQ Capital Group and Jeff Skoll, among others.
In 2023, the company announced a multi-year strategic partnership with M2GEN, a bioinformatics company focused on oncology research using data and analytics. The pair aimed to accelerate drug discovery and expand use investigations for cancer treatments.
Zephyr AI secured $18.5 million in seed funding in 2022.
Publicly traded Guardant Health [NASDAQ: GH] saw its stock jump 1.6% last month after the FDA approved its Guardant360 CDx as a companion diagnostic (CDx) to identify patients with advanced breast cancer with ESR1 mutations who may benefit from Eli Lilly’s drug Inluriyo (imlunestrant).
"Guardant360 CDx was approved in conjunction with Inluriyo for the treatment of adults with estrogen receptor-positive (ER+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2–), ESR1-mutated advanced or metastatic breast cancer whose disease progressed after at least one line of endocrine therapy (ET)," the company said in a statement.
The approval marked the second FDA CDx approval for the company's Guardant360 CDx for breast cancer treatment and its sixth overall CDx approval.
Guardant Health is currently trading at around $70.93 per share, up from around $33.76 in January of this year. The company is expected to report its financial results for the third quarter of 2025 after market close on Oct. 29.
