Summary: ClearNote Health announced the cost-effectiveness of its Avantect Pancreatic Cancer test for managing new-onset diabetes patients’ risk of developing pancreatic cancer within three years post-diagnosis, with findings to be presented at ISPOR.

Takeaways:

  1. Cost-Effective Early Detection: The Avantect test is shown to be cost-effective for early detection of pancreatic cancer in diabetes patients aged 50 and older.
  2. Collaborative Research: The findings were developed with Mayo Clinic and Arizona Centers for Digestive Health and will be presented at the ISPOR conference.
  3. High Incidence Link: Over 80% of pancreatic cancer patients have type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance, often diagnosed less than 24 months before their cancer diagnosis.

ClearNote Health, an early cancer detection company focused on enabling people at risk for high-mortality cancers to live longer, healthier lives, announced the results of a cost-effectiveness analysis on the use of the Avantect Pancreatic Cancer test to manage new-onset diabetes (NOD) patients for their risk of developing pancreatic cancer in the first three years post diabetes diagnosis.

Pancreatic Cancer Test Findings

These findings, developed in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic and the Arizona Centers for Digestive Health, will be presented on November 19 at the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) conference.

Greater than 80% of pancreatic cancer patients present with either type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance.1 The increased incidence of cancer in patients diagnosed with diabetes has been observed repeatedly in clinical studies, in most cases less than 24 months prior to their diagnosis of cancer. Avantect was shown to be cost-effective when used to detect early-stage pancreatic cancer in recently diagnosed diabetes patients 50 years of age or older.

“This health economic analysis is groundbreaking. Modeling suggests more patients would be detected with early stages of the disease, potentially increasing eligibility for life-saving surgical treatment. In collaboration with our research partners, we have shown that monitoring newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients 50 and over for pancreatic cancer using Avantect is not only a potential game changer for survival but it’s also more cost-effective for the healthcare system,” says David Mullarkey, CEO of ClearNote Health.

Addressing the Unmet Need for Early Cancer Detection

ClearNote Health aims to directly address the unmet need for early cancer detection in high-risk patients. The company’s proprietary epigenomic and genomic methods use a standard blood draw to identify cancer of the pancreas signals at its earliest stages by measuring 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) levels, copy number variants, and fragment sizes in cell-free DNA.

Reference

1 De Souza A, Irfan K, Masud F, Saif MW. Diabetes Type 2 and Pancreatic Cancer: A History Unfolding. Journal of the Pancreas, 2016, p 144-148