Oncimmune Holdings PLC (LON:ONC), a leading early cancer detection company developing and commercialising its proprietary EarlyCDT® platform technology, today announced that data relating to the development of its EarlyCDT®-Liver panel was presented at the 11th Annual International Liver Cancer Association (ILCA), which took place from Friday 15th to Sunday 17th September 2017, in Seoul, South Korea.
A presentation called “Autoantibodies as additive biomarkers to AFP for the detection of HCC” showed that a panel of 10 autoantibodies could detect hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with high sensitivity and specificity. The test was also able to distinguish HCC from patients with chronic liver disease regardless of stage or tumour size.
These results provided the data for Oncimmune to develop its next test to launch – EarlyCDT-Liver – which is in its final stages of autoantibody panel selection and validation. The test is expected to be launched in the first half of 2018 and will significantly improve the performance of the current existing diagnostic test alpha fetoprotein (AFP), which has come under scrutiny as the levels can be raised in many patients who have liver disease but not HCC.
Geoffrey Hamilton-Fairley, Oncimmune Holdings plc Chief Executive Officer, commented: “The detection of hepatocellular carcinoma at an early stage is crucial for a positive outcome. It is an especially big problem in Asia, and in Asian populations in Europe and America, where the incidence is many times that in the non-Asian populations due to Hepatitis B and C. Despite its low performance, many millions of AFP tests are carried out each year using a simple 96 well ELISA test similar to the EarlyCDT tests. The majority of hospitals worldwide have access to a 96 well ELISA reader and thus we believe that this better performing test should be welcomed throughout affected communities.”
