Oncimmune hits commercial milestone with Siemens partnership
$100bn is being ploughed into oncology treatment each year. But one area that has received relatively little attention is the safe, accurate and importantly non-invasive diagnosis of patients with early stage lung cancer.
Currently the standard of care is to do a CT scan. If an ‘indeterminate’ nodule is found, then the doctor has the tricky decision of whether or not to undertake a possibly risky and expensive biopsy of the suspected tumour - or instead adopt a ‘wait and monitor’ approach. The problem is that around 40% of the nodules that are chosen to be biopsied prove non-malignant.
The good news is that help could be around the corner from (), which today said that it was partnering with Siemens Healthineers to improve the assessment of indeterminate pulmonary nodules. Oncimmune's EarlyCDT product is a super accurate ‘Rule Out’ test with around 90% specificity), which involves a much safer and cheaper, non-invasive blood draw.
Combined with Siemens' AI-Rad Companion Chest CT and AI-powered radiology assistant, physicians could in theory be able to significantly reduce the number of patients that have needless biopsies where the identified nodule is in fact non-cancerous.
So, how big is the opportunity? Siemens Healthineers is one of the world’s top 4 CT scanner OEMs, and the total addressable market has been estimated to be £3.8bn a year by 2024. With more than 200,000 tests already conducted globally and EarlyCDT’s results being supported by peer reviewed data in 12,000+ patients, I suspect chances of this collaboration turning into significant commercial opportunity are high,
The partnership will now appraise the data previously collected both from the Early Detection of Cancer of the Lung Scotland (ECLS) trial, and the large randomised study into the utility of EarlyCDT Lung in asymptomatic screening.
Assuming this validation work confirms the desired medical benefits, then it's possible that Siemens will incorporate EarlyCDT as part of its ‘go-to-market’ strategy, combining Oncimmune's best in class immunodiagnostic blood test with super advanced CT imaging and AI enhancement.
Oncimmune's CEO Adam M Hill commented: "If lung cancer is detected early when it doesn't yet cause symptoms, the chances for curative treatment to work are good: the average five-year survival rate for the earliest stage of the disease can be as high as 90%. Oncimmune's easy-to-use EarlyCDT Lung blood test has proven utility in successfully triaging patients with cancerous nodules into early intervention. It is our hope that combining this test with Siemens Healthineers' AI-Rad Companion Chest CT will improve diagnostic accuracy in those patients with more difficult to diagnose lung cancer."
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