Largest ever study for diagnosing pancreatic cancer paves way for early intervention to significantly improve survival rates.
LUND, SWEDEN - Dec 4, 2015 -
LUND, Sweden
― CREATE Health Translational Cancer Center, Lund, Sweden in collaboration with Immunovia today announced that they have completed a retrospective study demonstrating that the IMMray PanCan-d test is able to differentiate with 96% accuracy patients with early resectable stages of pancreatic cancer, stage I and II, from the healthy controls. When analyzing all stages of pancreatic cancer, the accuracy of Immunovia´s test is reported as high as 98%. The study covered 1400 blood samples, making it the largest study for diagnosing pancreatic cancer in all stages.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly and difficult to detect and diagnose cancers, as the signs and symptoms are similar to many other diseases. There are more than 40,000 deaths and over 50,000 new cases diagnosed each year in the U.S. alone, and the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is currently 4-6%. It is predicted to become the second leading cause of cancer death by 2020. Early detection is, however, the key to significantly improving pancreatic cancer patients 5-year survival rates from 4-6% to potentially 50-60%.
Prof. Carl Borrebaeck, the main investigator of the study and one of the founders of the CREATE Health Cancer Centre said:
We have already seen in previous studies performed on over 1 000 pancreatic cancer blood samples that the IMMray PanCan-d biomarker signature is highly specific and sensitive for stage III and IV patients. The results from this new very large study are extremely encouraging due to the large number of early stage patient samples. Having an accuracy as high as 96% on a study of 149 samples of stage I and II patients and 700 matched healthy controls clearly shows that our biomarker signature is able to detect the asymptomatic early stage patients when the cancer is still resectable by surgical methods. This also validates our previous study performed in China at Tianjin Hospital and Cancer Institute.
The test used in this study is based on Immunovias core technology platform called IMMray. This leading edge technology combines widely recognised clinical immunoproteomics research expertise from Lund University with unique serum protein biomarker signatures for a variety of major diseases and state-of-the-art bioinformatics algorithms and interpretation software. Each blood sample is analyzed and characterized using a disease-specific antibody microarray targeting a multiplex panel of biomarkers. A simple blood test provides all the necessary information for enabling early diagnosis, as well as for following disease progression, and/or therapy monitoring.
Mats Grahn, CEO Immunovia concluded:
"We now have a strong confirmation that IMMray PanCan-d is able to detect pancreatic cancer in all stages, even in stage I and II. These very encouraging results provide us with confidence to perform the next large pancreatic cancer study that will be conducted by Immunovia in collaboration with Dr. Brian Drucker and his team at Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, USA. Together, we are aiming to make a significant difference in pancreatic cancer patients lives and improve their chances of survival.
Note: This press release presents expanded data analysis and results that confirm the information already presented in Immunovia´s prospect.