Pacific Edge signs agreement with America's Choice Provider Network to expand access to Cxbladder in the US

DUNEDIN, New Zealand and HERSHEY, Pa., Oct. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Pacific Edge has signed an agreement with America's Choice Provider Network (ACPN) for access to Cxbladder. ACPN offers a medical network solution for more than 14 million Americans through its client base consisting of insurance carriers, third party administrators, health and welfare funds, employer groups and self-insured health plans. This follows Pacific Edge's recent announcement of the agreement with FedMed providing 40 million Americans with access to Cxbladder¹. 

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Pacific Edge Chief Executive Officer David Darling says agreements with FedMed and now ACPN form key elements in the commercial roll-out of Cxbladder in the US.

Pacific Edge, through its wholly owned subsidiary Pacific Edge Diagnostics USA (PED_USA,) has already achieved the first commercial sales of Cxbladder in the US² and has processed samples collected using its proprietary Urine Sample System at its custom built laboratory in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

"These provider networks provide patients access to healthcare services and technology by contracting with providers and payers on a national basis. These two recent agreements signed with FedMed and now ACPN will give millions of Americans access to Cxbladder and its positive benefits as a quick, cost effective, non-invasive and highly accurate cancer detection test that is particularly appealing to US healthcare professionals, patients, and insurers," said Jackie Walker, Chief Executive Officer of PED_USA.

"PED_USA's sales and marketing team is focused on the clinicians who are treating the largest number of bladder cancer patients," she continued. "They are also focused on the large commercial payers and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which provides healthcare insurance for 100 million people or nearly a third of the American population. Other key sales targets include Integrated Healthcare Systems, comprising many providers and facilities while offering a wide variety of health insurance plans, the Veterans Administration (VA), and Large Urology Groups (LUGS), who are the point of contact for many patients presenting with haematuria (blood in the urine) which is an early indicator of possible bladder cancer."

More than one million Americans will undergo medical investigation this year for potential bladder cancer at an estimated cost of $US1 billion. Bladder cancer is one of the most expensive cancers to treat.  The very high recurrence of this disease (some patients receive expensive monitoring for the rest of their lives) cause bladder cancer to have the highest total medical costs of any cancer from detection to death. In the US, the total medical cost approaches $US220,000 per patient.

ABOUT Cxbladder

Cxbladder is a proprietary, accurate molecular diagnostic test that enables the non-invasive detection of bladder cancer from a small volume of urine. It provides general practitioners and urologists with a quick, cost effective and accurate measure of the presence of the cancer, and provides urologists with the opportunity to reduce their reliance on the need for invasive tests such as cystoscopy. The recently published, Journal of Urology in September 2012, multi-centre international clinical study recruited 485 patients from Australia and New Zealand.

Results show that Cxbladder out-performed all of the benchmark technologies in the clinical trial and detected nearly all of the tumours of concern to a urologist; At a performance of 82% sensitivity and 85% specificity the test sees 100% of T1, 100% of T2, 100% of T3, 100% of Tis and 100% of upper urinary tract cancers as well as greater than 95% of high grade tumours.

http://www.cxbladder.com

ABOUT PACIFIC EDGE

Pacific Edge Limited (NZX: PEB) is a New Zealand based cancer diagnostic company specialising in the discovery and commercialisation of diagnostic and prognostic technology for the early detection and monitoring of cancer.

Products in development and in clinical trials are accurate and simple to use genomic and proteomic tools for the earlier detection, improved characterisation and better management of gastric, bladder, colorectal cancers and melanoma. The company has recently completed and released its first product for the detection of bladder cancer, Cxbladder, and is actively marketing the product to urologists in New Zealand, Australia and soon to be Spain and the US.

http://pacificedge.co.nz

ABOUT PACIFIC EDGE DIAGNOSTICS

Pacific Edge takes its exciting cancer detection tests to market through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Pacific Edge Diagnostics NZ Ltd and Pacific Edge Diagnostics USA Ltd, and selected commercial partners in Australia and Spain, Healthscope and Oryzon respectively.

http://www.pacificedgedx.com

SOURCE Pacific Edge