Pacific Edge awarded more patents for cancer diagnostics

Pacific Edge awarded more patents for cancer diagnostics

Dunedin-based biomedical company Pacific Edge has added to its suite of patents with patents having issued in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand for the company’s technology for the detection of gastric cancer.

Gastric or stomach cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in the world. There are an estimated 934,000 new cases of gastric cancer diagnosed globally each year. The greatest incidences occur in China, Japan and Korea. Japan where cancer has been the leading cause of death since 1981 and gastric cancer one of the most significant cancers is seen as a significant market for the Company. Of the approximately 137 million people in Japan there are approximately 65 million over the age of 40 years, in the at-risk age group and entitled to the Japanese governments national free screening program for gastric cancer.

Pacific Edge chief executive David Darling says that it is particularly challenging to meet the specific requirements of the European patent office and an issued European patent is recognition of the very strong science that the scientists at Pacific Edge have achieved. These patents join the patents recently issued to the company for detection of bladder cancer and colorectal cancer prognosis in New Zealand.

The bladder cancer detection test Cxbladder® has now entered the market in NZ and Australia. The Company expects to launch in Spain shortly (in conjunction with its Spanish partner Oryzon). A CLIA laboratory is being established in Hershey, Pennsylvania, to enable the commercialisation of Cxbladder® in the United States.

“We anticipate that we will have patents issued in other targeted countries over the next 12 to 24 months,” CEO David Darling said.

“These new technologies we are now commercialising enable early detection and better management of cancer and are expected to provide significant opportunities for the company, globally”.

The worldwide cancer diagnostic market was growing and the molecular diagnostic component of the cancer diagnostic market is expected to reach a value of US$2.2 (NZ$2.8) billion by 2014.

Pacific Edge raised NZ$20 million in September this year to enable the commercialisation of its bladder cancer detection test, Cxbladder® in the United States. The company is expecting to launch the test in the US on completion of its laboratory in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Cxbladder®
Cxbladder is a non-invasive, accurate test that enables the early 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 completed multi-centre international clinical study recruited 467 patients from Australia and New Zealand. Results show that Cxbladder® outperforms all of the benchmark technologies in the trial and detected nearly all of the tumours of concern to a urologist; greater than 95% of all late stage and high grade tumours.

Pacific Edge Limited (NZX: PEB):
Pacific Edge (PE) is a New Zealand based biomedical and diagnostics company specialising in the discovery and commercialisation of diagnostic and prognostic technology for the early detection and monitoring of cancer. The company has recently completed and released its first product for the detection of bladder cancer, Cxbladder®

For more information, please visit our websites at http://www.peblnz.com and http://www.cxbladder.com

ENDS

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