Oncimmune Holdings plc (LON:ONC), the leading global immunodiagnostics group, has announced the pre-publication of the three-year follow-up data for the Early detection of Cancer of the Lung Scotland trial in medRxiv titled ‘Targeted screening for lung cancer with autoantibodies‘1. The pre-publication shows that after three years, the number of late-stage cancers and deaths were lower in patients tested with the EarlyCDT Lung blood test. Crucially, all cause mortality as well as cancer specific and lung cancer mortality was reduced.
The ECLS trial, believed to be the largest randomised controlled trial for the detection of cancer using blood-based biomarkers, was published in a peer-reviewed paper entitled ‘Earlier diagnosis of lung cancer in a randomised trial of an autoantibody blood test followed by imaging’2 in the European Respiratory Journal. Published last year, the study showed a 36% reduction in late-stage diagnoses of lung cancer. In addition, the results from the trial indicated a lower rate of all deaths and lung cancer-related deaths among people in the intervention arm of the trial after two years compared with people in the control group suggesting that the EarlyCDT Lung blood test followed by computerised tomograpgy (CT) imaging could produce a mortality benefit.
The three-year follow-up data now available as a pre-publication manuscript on medRxiv (https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2021.08.17.21262105v1) supports a continued trend towards a reduction in mortality. The follow-up data in this paper also showed that autoantibodies detected by the EarlyCDT Lung blood test are specific and most sensitive for early-stage disease in the first year after testing, with lung cancers detected by the EarlyCDT Lung test detected mainly at an early stage.
In Scotland, lung cancer affects more than 5,000 people every year of which approximately 4,000 will die of the disease, usually because the diagnosis is made too late for curative treatment2. Earlier diagnosis means that more patients should benefit from newer, more effective, chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy, therefore, reducing the impact of this disease.
Further follow-up analyses will be performed on this unique, globally significant cohort after five and ten years.
Dr Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune Holdings said: “The key to cancer survival is early detection. With thousands fewer patients being referred for lung cancer tests since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the early detection of lung cancer has never been more important. This paper demonstrates the impact a simple blood test in combination with volumetric imaging can have on cancer mortality. Cancer specific mortality was significantly lower in those tested with EarlyCDT Lung. Assuming the three year survival from lung cancer is 80% in those tested, this would suggest 472 people need to to be tested in order to save one life, which is comparable with other established, and widely available screening programmes for other cancers.
“It is encouraging to see this data generated for the EarlyCDT Lung blood test which provides further evidence in support of its adoption. Oncimmune is in ongoing discussions to this end with healthcare providers across the UK and further afield.”
