(PRWEB) August 13, 2013
Mid America Clinical Laboratories (MACL) announced today that it has recently entered into an agreement with Oncimmune® USA LLC to offer EarlyCDT®-Lung, a simple blood test that aids physicians in the early detection of lung cancer.
“By partnering with Mid America Clinical Laboratories we are able to provide individuals who are at increased risk of developing lung cancer the benefits of EarlyCDT-Lung, the innovative blood test to help aid physicians in diagnosing lung cancer at an earlier stage,” said Greg Stanley, Chief Commercial Officer at Oncimmune USA.
Mid America Clinical Laboratories (MACL) is pleased to provide testing that detects lung cancer at an early stage to the communities we serve. Early detection, we believe, is critical to the success of treatment of this deadly form of cancer. This early detection testing will be of great value to the physicians and the patients affected in communities throughout Indiana.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among men and women in the United States. It takes the lives of more people each year than colon, breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancers combined. Lung cancer claims over 3 times as many men as prostate cancer and nearly 2 times as many women as breast cancer. The American Cancer Society predicts that in 2013 there will be approximately 228,190 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed and 159,480 lung cancer associated deaths in the United States.
Seventeen peer-reviewed publications support the EarlyCDT® autoantibody platform, click here. EarlyCDT-Lung has high specificity (93%), 7 times fewer false positives and 7 times better positive predictive value (PPV) than CT, and >91% accuracy, when considering a population with 2% prevalence of lung cancer (20 lung cancers per thousand). Numerous leading academic and medical institutions and more than 2,000 physicians are using EarlyCDT-Lung. Patient blood samples sent to MACL will be analyzed at Oncimmune’s CLIA-certified laboratory located in De Soto, Kansas.
Mid America Clinical Laboratories is a joint venture clinical laboratory owned by Quest Diagnostics, Community Health Network, St. Vincent Health and CoLab. MACL serves communities throughout Indiana managing 18 hospital laboratories, over 30 Patient Care Centers and a Regional Laboratory located at our headquarters in Indianapolis. It is the vision of our organization to provide high quality, innovative testing that delivers valuable information to improve the health of our communities in an ever evolving healthcare environment.
About Oncimmune
Oncimmune (USA) LLC, founded in 2006, is an industry leader in early cancer detection. Oncimmune is a privately funded company located in Nottingham, UK with US headquarters and a CLIA-certified laboratory located just outside of Kansas City. The company launched a proprietary platform technology for early cancer detection, called EarlyCDT®. The first commercially available test, EarlyCDT®-Lung, a blood test to aid in the early detection of lung cancer, was released in 2009. The company’s mission is to develop early cancer detection tests to identify more than 90 percent of solid-tumor cancers, which make up 70 percent of all cancers including lung, breast, colorectal, prostate, stomach, pancreatic and ovarian.
About EarlyCDT-Lung
EarlyCDT-Lung is a ground-breaking diagnostic blood test that aids in the early detection of lung cancer. EarlyCDT-lung has been shown to detect early and late stage cancer in research studies as well as in clinical use. An audit of more than 1,600 patients, confirms the test performs in the clinical setting as expected, click here. The Scottish government is conducting a 10,000 patient, randomized clinical trial to validate the economic benefit of the test in screening high-risk patients, click here. Oncimmune’s EarlyCDT-Lung uses a panel of tumor antigens to diagnose autoantibodies (immuno-biomarkers) produced by the patient’s immune system when lung cancer is present. Elevation of any one of the autoantibodies in the test panel above a predetermined cut-off value suggests that a tumor might be present. Previous studies have shown that autoantibodies can be detected up to five years earlier than a tumor can be seen in routine diagnostic imaging procedures. Tests that detect autoantibodies to a single tumor protein have been available for a number of years but have had low detection rates (sensitivity). Previously, multiple antigen tests had low specificity, especially for early detection. Oncimmune’s EarlyCDT-Lung has increased the sensitivity of the autoantibody test while maintaining a high level of specificity.