Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news talk us through the
Speaker 1: main growth drivers that you see when you take a
Speaker 1: look over the course of this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first, Katie, thanks for having us on this morning.
Speaker 2: You know, in terms of the growth drivers, we really
Speaker 2: think there's two or three major things going on. One, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: is still all of the chronic care disease management that's
Speaker 2: occurring in the country. You know, type two diabetes at
Speaker 2: an all time high, autoimmune disorders, cancer rates, younger and
Speaker 2: younger patients being diagnosed with cancer, colon cancer in particular.
Speaker 2: So all of this is leading to a lot of
Speaker 2: testing as you can imagine, and helping people diagnose, helping
Speaker 2: people figure out what the right therapy they should select,
Speaker 2: and then actually monitoring the disease. Now at the other
Speaker 2: end of the spectrum, and this is really a more
Speaker 2: recent phenomenon, is all the new testing from a consumer
Speaker 2: health standpoint, So you know, prevention is all about doing
Speaker 2: something before the symptoms set in, and between our own
Speaker 2: consumer health offering and then partnerships that we've developed in
Speaker 2: the industry, we are really powering the wellness industry today.
Speaker 2: So our relationships with Function Health, our relationships with WOOP,
Speaker 2: with Aura, we're trying to make lab testing ubiquitous to consumers,
Speaker 2: especially those that really have a focus on prevention and wellness.
Speaker 2: But really it's those two things, Katie, that are really
Speaker 2: driving the growth.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you brought up consumer health and some
Speaker 1: of the partnerships you have Loop and AURA being some
Speaker 1: of them. You also have partnerships with HYMNS and Function Health.
Speaker 1: I see as well. How do you see that part
Speaker 1: of the business evolving. How meaningful of a growth driver
Speaker 1: can that be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So to put all of that in context, between
Speaker 2: our own direct business, our own consumer direct business, plus
Speaker 2: our partnerships with all those that you mentioned, it's about
Speaker 2: a two hundred and fifty million dollars segment and you know,
Speaker 2: we did eleven billion dollars last year, so it's meaningful.
Speaker 2: What's more meaningful is that segment grew it over thirty
Speaker 2: percent last year, and we expect it to continue to grow,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, north of twenty percent this year.
Speaker 2: And again, what we're seeing is just consumers taking more
Speaker 2: interest in their health. With this notion of let's prevent disease,
Speaker 2: let's try to get in front of that. You know,
Speaker 2: if we look at our business today, about two thirds
Speaker 2: of it is diagnosis of disease, you know, treatment of disease,
Speaker 2: treatment monitoring, and really only a third of our business
Speaker 2: is prevention and wellness, general health and wellness testing. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I hope over the next day decade we can flip that.
Speaker 2: I really hope that we can be two thirds prevention
Speaker 2: and wellness and then a third of chroduct care management.
Speaker 1: When you zoom out a bit, what are you seeing
Speaker 1: in terms of trends when it comes to what types
Speaker 1: of tests are being asked for and ordered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Alzheimer's Katie is a very very important set of
Speaker 2: tests that we now offer. You know, before blood based
Speaker 2: biomarkers came to fruition with respect to Alzheimer's really the
Speaker 2: gold standard where cognitive tests that physicians perform and then
Speaker 2: they would move that patient directly into imaging, whether that's
Speaker 2: a pet CT image or an MRI image. And today
Speaker 2: what we're seeing is there's blood based biomarkers for amyloid
Speaker 2: pop plaque, for what we call these TAO bundles, and
Speaker 2: you're actually going to detect Alzheimer's at a much earlier
Speaker 2: stage than what you would see in imaging and some
Speaker 2: of the new therapies that have been brought to market
Speaker 2: by Eastside and by Lilly. These therapies generally work really
Speaker 2: really well at the earliest stages of disease on set.
Speaker 2: So these biomarkers are playing a very very important role today.
Speaker 2: We position these blood based tests with primary care physicians
Speaker 2: as well as neurologists. You know today, if you have
Speaker 2: symptoms of Alzheimer's it can take upwards of six to
Speaker 2: eight months to get in to see a memory care specialist,
Speaker 2: and patients just don't want to wait that long because again,
Speaker 2: there's therapies available if you are diagnosed.
Speaker 1: Because you think about what's going on at some of
Speaker 1: your peer diagnostics companies. Oncology testing has been driving just
Speaker 1: rapid growth. So how does Quest position itself in that space.
Speaker 1: I know that you recently bought Haystack Oncology, for example,
Speaker 1: but is that an area where you would consider additional deals?
Speaker 2: Yeah, first, Katie, it's a very very important part of
Speaker 2: our business today. Most people don't know, but Quest Diagnostics
Speaker 2: has a very large anatomical pathology business. Anatomical pathology is
Speaker 2: when specimens are cut outside cut from the human body.
Speaker 2: They're tissue samples, and so we have a very We
Speaker 2: have the largest anatomical pathology business in the country where
Speaker 2: we make diagnoses of cancer every single day. Now, once
Speaker 2: you have that tumor specimen, there's several follow on tests
Speaker 2: that are very important. The first being what type of
Speaker 2: therapy should be used to treat that cancer after treatment
Speaker 2: or potentially right after surgery. The next question is did
Speaker 2: the surgeon get it all or did the chemotherapy eradicate
Speaker 2: that disease? And we have a task you mentioned, the
Speaker 2: Haystack minimally residual disease testing that looks for very very
Speaker 2: small remnants of the cancer that may remain either post
Speaker 2: surgery or post chemotherapy. So it's a growing portion of
Speaker 2: our portfolio of testing today. Now, in addition, we offer
Speaker 2: a lot of routine cancer tests PSA screening all sorts
Speaker 2: of different types of cancer markers at the screening phase.
Speaker 2: So all told, cancer of our eleven billion dollar portfolio today,
Speaker 2: cancer in its entirety is about a billion dollars of
Speaker 2: our portfolio.