Colorectal cancer blood test maker Guardant Health has teamed up with “Grey’s Anatomy” star Patrick Dempsey for a new, highly emotional video.
The actor, who has been working with Guardant and promoting its Shield test since March, stands in a dark room as a projector reveals that 55,000 people die from colon cancer in the U.S. each year.
Clearly moved, Dempsey says, “Oh my goodness.” The projection then changes to show thousands of individual names and ages of people who have died from the disease. Many were in their 40s and 50s.
Dempsey ends the one-minute video by saying that most cases of the disease are preventable and urging viewers over age 45 to “call your doctor about cancer screening.”
Guardant and Shield, its blood test for colorectal cancer screening, are clearly labeled throughout the video and featured prominently at the end. Dempsey, who has worked with Amgen since 2007 and joined forces with Pfizer in 2024, began collaborating with Guardant in March.
In his first awareness campaign for the test maker, Dempsey appeared in a video in which he had his blood drawn and screened for colorectal cancer using Shield.
The FDA approved Guardant’s test in 2024 to screen adults 45 and older who are at average risk for colorectal cancer.
The video debuted the same week the FDA approved Freenome’s SimpleScreen CRC, a rival blood test for colorectal cancer screening. The test is approved for adults 45 and older at average risk for the disease and will be marketed exclusively in the U.S. by Abbott.
Blood tests are still considered less reliable for detecting or ruling out colorectal cancer. Visual exams such as colonoscopies and stool-based tests such as fecal immunochemical tests, or FITs, which detect trace amounts of blood, remain the preferred screening methods.
Blood draws may, however, be useful for people who do not wish to undergo either of those screening methods.
The awareness campaign comes as colorectal cancer rates rise among younger patients in the U.S. The incidence rate increased by about 3% annually among people under 50 from 2013 to 2022, according to the American Cancer Society, even as the overall rate declined by about 1% annually during the same period.
Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death among people under 50 in the U.S., the ACS recently announced, suggesting that greater symptom awareness and screening uptake are needed.