Harbinger Health Begins New Clinical Study in Individuals at High Risk for Cancer
Clinical study with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Research will evaluate Harbinger’s technology for early multi-cancer detection in new patient population
Cambridge, Mass., December 5, 2023 – Harbinger Health (“Harbinger,” “the Company”), a biotechnology company pioneering new technologies to fundamentally change cancer screening and detection, announced today a research agreement with the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to advance the Company’s technology for early-stage multi-cancer detection.
With this agreement, Harbinger and the Hale Family Center will jointly conduct a clinical study of participants at high risk for cancer due to a family history of pancreatic cancer. Harbinger will test its proprietary blood-based cancer screening platform using blood samples from participants over a period of 30 months to model their risk level for the disease. Brian Wolpin, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Hale Family Center, will lead the study together with Hale Family Center investigators, Matthew Yurgelun, M.D., and Michael Rosenthal, M.D., Ph.D.
Early-stage cancer detection can provide high-risk populations with the best chance of survival. Pancreatic cancer is among the deadliest types of cancer, and patients are often diagnosed at the disease’s most advanced stages where surgical intervention and treatment options are limited. Further, a personal or family history of pancreatic cancer carries an increased risk for other types of cancer, most notably breast cancer and cancers of organs in the gastrointestinal tract.
May Orfali, M.D., chief medical officer of Harbinger Health, shared, “Today, people with a known history of cancer can be bombarded by a battery of screening and imaging tests that are often ineffective at catching the earliest markers of disease. Additionally, only a small fraction of people who are eligible for these tests actually get them, whether due to high cost, lack of access, or simply the burden of repeated appointments. An early-stage multi-cancer screening tool could eradicate these barriers. This research collaboration affords us an opportunity to test our platform and multi-tier approach in a high-risk setting with researchers at one of the premier cancer centers in the country. Ultimately, we hope to one day provide high-risk individuals and medical providers with advanced tools to assess risk and detect multiple cancers before they are visible or symptomatic.”
About Harbinger Health
Harbinger Health is pioneering the detection of early cancer and enabling foundationally new approaches to cancer screening, diagnosis and management. The company combines advances in artificial intelligence with proprietary insights into the biology of the beginnings of cancer to identify cancer before it is visible or symptomatic with the aim of developing low-cost, multi-cancer blood tests. Harbinger envisions a future where, instead of keeping cancer from spreading, it could be kept from forming, making a cancer diagnosis a routine health problem to be addressed rather than a life-altering event to be feared with profound implications for people, healthcare systems and societies. Harbinger was founded by Flagship Pioneering after three years of foundational research in its Labs unit and launched in 2020. Learn more about Harbinger by visiting www.harbinger-health.com or following us on Twitter (@harbingerhlth) and LinkedIn.
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Harbinger has licensed intellectual property owned by Dana-Farber. As a result, Dana-Farber has an equity interest in Harbinger.