9th Sep 2019 12:07
(Alliance News) - Oncimmune Holdings PLC on Monday announced positive results from a trial of its EarlyCDT Lung test to detect early stage lung cancer.
Shares in Oncimmune were up 5.5% at 96.00 pence in London at midday.
The trial took place in Scotland and involved 12,209 patients at risk of developing lung cancer. More people were diagnosed at an early disease stage in the two years after the EarlyCDT test than in the control arm receiving standard clinical care.
Oncimmune's technology detects autoantibodies, a type of antibody created by the immune system to defend against cancer cells.
Among patients who received the EarlyCDT Lung test and then developed lung cancer in the following two years, 41% were diagnosed at an early stage - stage 1 or stage 2 - compared to just 27% in the control group.
This caused a 36% drop in late stage presentation after two years in patients who were given the EarlyCDT Lung test.
Moreover, patients who were given the test had a lower rate of death after two years with lung cancer-specific deaths down. While this suggests a mortality benefit from the test, "the trial was not powered to demonstrate such a trend after two years".
The next step in trialling EarlyCDT Lung is a larger population test of as many as 200,000 patients which will focus on survival and mortality.
Oncimmune Chief Executive Adam Hill said: "We are thrilled that the [Early Detection of Cancer of the Lung Scotland] trial has demonstrated so clearly the potential of our EarlyCDT technology platform to transform the way cancer is diagnosed. We look forward to working with health authorities in Scotland and beyond to roll out EarlyCDT Lung more widely, with the aim of saving lives and reducing costs for the NHS and other healthcare systems around the world. Meanwhile, we are continuing to test our technology on other forms of cancer, including liver, ovarian, breast and prostate, in pursuit of our ambition to build the leading immunodiagnostic platform in the field of oncology."
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