Guardant Health ECLIPSE data ‘interesting,’ says Craig-Hallum

Craig-Hallum analyst Alexander Nowak notes that Guardant Health announced that its pivotal study to assess the Shield blood-based colon cancer screening test, ECLIPSE, was accepted to the Digestive Disease Week conference as a late-breaker and although the company has not commented, the abstract is available online and more data will be presented on May 9. As previously reported, Shield’s sensitivity for detecting colon cancer was 83% across all cases, but "where things take an interesting turn is around the staging results," the analyst tells investors. "We can only characterize the incremental details around results here as ‘interesting,’" the analyst adds, stating that "on one hand" Shield has very high performance, meeting 92% sensitivity in cancers where staging info is available, but "the big question is why the 20% of the study’s CRCs are missing staging info." The firm has a Buy rating and $88 price target on Guardant Health shares.