Oncimmune® LLC, maker of EarlyCDT™-Lung, a simple blood test that aids physicians in the risk assessment and early detection of lung cancer, today announced that two oral presentations and five poster presentations during this week’s American College of Chest Physicians’ (ACCP) annual meeting in Vancouver—CHEST 2010—will collectively highlight the clinical and economic benefits of EarlyCDT-Lung. Oncimmune’s EarlyCDT-Lung test uses a panel of tumor antigens to detect the presence of immuno-biomarkers produced in the form of autoantibodies by the patient’s immune system. Elevation of any one of the panel of immuno-biomarkers (autoantibodies) above a predetermined cut-off value suggests that a tumor might be present.

These studies follow data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) earlier this year. The studies presented this week at CHEST reaffirm EarlyCDT-Lung’s performance with additional data sets. Various studies, including those presented this week at CHEST, validate that EarlyCDT-Lung detects all types of lung cancers at all stages, including early stage disease.

Subsequent to the studies presented here, Oncimmune has added two new antigens to the EarlyCDT-Lung panel, for a total of eight autoantibody assays. The test now has a greater than 90% accuracy, three times better positive predictive value than computed tomography (CT), with seven times fewer false positives. These data will be published soon.

"We are very pleased to have the opportunity at this CHEST meeting to show more EarlyCDT-Lung data," Professor John Robertson, MD, FRCS, chief scientific officer and founder of Oncimmune and Professor of Surgery, City Hospital, Nottingham University, United Kingdom. "Recent publications of validation data in the Annals of Oncology, three posters at ASCO, along with the two oral presentations and five posters at ACCP, clearly demonstrate the depth of our scientific data and its reproducible performance. We are publishing a number of new papers in the next twelve months that further underpin our scientific credentials. All this should lead, I hope, to early adoption of EarlyCDT-Lung so that we can help patients in the diagnosis of lung cancer at an earlier stage and thus improve prognosis."

According to Professor Peter Boyle, PhD, International Prevention Research Institute, Lyon, France, and presenter of one of two Oncimmune oral presentations, "I have followed Oncimmune’s progress since its inception and latterly as a member of the company’s independent Scientific Advisory Board. The company has always adhered to rigorous scientific disciplines in its work. The end result is a real and effective test for the early detection of lung cancer and supports decision making over the management of lung nodules. I will be presenting one aspect at this year’s CHEST meeting that shows that EarlyCDT-Lung detects immuno-biomarkers at all stages of lung cancer, including stages 1 and 2. This simple blood test can help us find lung cancer earlier. By catching the cancer earlier, treatment is more likely to be successful. It has been invaluable to have the health economics of the test carefully examined by an independent firm of heath economists; their analysis shows that it is cost effective for both screening and CT nodule risk stratification."

Source: Oncimmune LLC