NEW YORK ─ Oncimmune on Monday announced that it has inked contracts to supply its EarlyCDT Lung blood test to the UK's NHS Norfolk & Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group and, as part of the iDx-LUNG evaluation program, to the NHS Lung Health Check programs in Wessex and Yorkshire.
Financial and other terms of the contracts were not disclosed.
The Nottingham, UK-based firm further said that National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has selected EarlyCDT Lung for its Diagnostics Assessment Guidance. The blood test's selection follows the publication by NICE in March 2020 of the positive Medtech Innovation Briefing 209, EarlyCDT-Lung for cancer risk classification of indeterminate pulmonary nodules.
EarlyCDT Lung detects the elevated presence of autoantibodies generated by the body's immune system as a natural defense against cancer cells.
The Norfolk & Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group will evaluate the use of the test in a clinical setting. A successful conclusion to the contract, combined with NICE guidance, would support the adoption of the EarlyCDT Lung blood test into the clinical pathway for the early detection of lung cancer across NHS East of England, Oncimmune said.
The first phase, scheduled to start in January 2021, will focus on patients with indeterminate pulmonary nodules. The second phase will focus on use of EarlyCDT Lung in a screening setting with people at risk recruited in selected general practitioner practices in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. The evaluation is scheduled to be completed in both settings within 12 months.
Separately, the iDx-LUNG program will collect blood samples from 15,000 people attending the NHS England’s Lung Health Check program delivered through mobile computed tomography (CT) scanning sites across Wessex and Yorkshire. As well as targeting increased survival rates, the iDx-LUNG program aims to streamline detecting incident lung cancers and reduce the NHS resources needed to find each new lung cancer case.
Oncimmune further said it is in discussions with other regional health systems in the UK for use of the blood test in lung cancer diagnostic programs.