Dr. McDreamy has signed onto yet another cancer awareness initiative. “Grey’s Anatomy” star Patrick Dempsey, who has worked with Amgen since 2007 and joined forces with Pfizer in 2024, is now collaborating with cancer test maker Guardant Health.
Amid March’s Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, Dempsey is sharing his experience using Guardant’s Shield blood test for the disease. The test was approved by the FDA in 2024 to screen adults aged 45 and up who are at average risk for colorectal cancer.
A minute-long video follows Dempsey as he undergoes the Shield test, showing the actor chatting with a clinician about the test—and joking about his own “experience” as a medical professional—during the few minutes it takes to perform the routine blood draw required.
“The biggest step is just getting out the door and going to see your doctor, because Shield is about making screening easier,” Dempsey says in the video.
The screening awareness push comes as colorectal cancer rates are on the rise among younger patients in the U.S., with the incidence rate rising around 3% per year among those under 50 from 2013 to 2022, per the American Cancer Society (ACS), despite an overall 1% annual decrease during the same period across the entire population.
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.
In Tuesday’s announcement about the partnership with Dempsey, Guardant cited additional data showing that the five-year survival rate for colorectal cancer is more than 90% when caught in its earliest stages but plummets to 13% for late-stage diagnoses—“underscoring why early detection is so critical,” the company said.
Dempsey’s support for cancer awareness dates back decades. Beyond his industry partnerships for the cause, he also founded the Dempsey Center in his home state of Maine in 2008 to provide free, personalized and comprehensive cancer care.
That work is inspired by Dempsey’s mother’s battle with ovarian cancer.
“Seeing my mother’s ongoing fight with cancer showed me firsthand how critical an early, regular screening is to have the best chance at beating cancer. That’s why I chose to screen with Guardant’s Shield blood test and use my voice to prevent other families from facing the same heartbreak,” Dempsey said in Tuesday’s release.
“The risks are too high for colorectal cancer and too many Americans continue to delay their lifesaving screenings,” he continued, adding, “If you’re 45 and over and at average risk for CRC, talk to your doctor about screening options, including innovative solutions like Shield that are making screening easier and more convenient to complete.”