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Oncimmune expands network with EarlyCDT Lung deal with Russia’s R-Pharm

Oncimmune expands network with EarlyCDT Lung deal with Russia’s R-Pharm

UK biotech Oncimmune (ONC) has expanded its distribution network for its lead product, the EarlyCDT Lung liquid biopsy test, with the signing of a deal with Russia’s R-Pharm JSC. The deal comes a week after Oncimmune announced an agreement with the US company, Biodesix, to commercialise the lung cancer prognostic test and acquire its US-based operations. Both deals follow the announcement in June of a positive result in the Early Cancer Detection Test – Lung Cancer Scotland Study (ECLS).   

The deal with R-Pharm covers Russia as well as members of the Eurasian Customs Union (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan) and provides R-Pharm with an option to extend this to include Commonwealth of Independent States countries of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Georgia.The deal should generate revenues of at least £5m over the initial five-year term, including milestone payments of £2.75m. The intention is that R-Pharm will initially offer a screening programme in Moscow and, eventually, across Russia. Meanwhile, the recent deal with Biodesix should have a value of more than $28m to Oncimmune over five years, of which $7.2m  is the minimum volume-based revenue. The balance of $19.8m represents the milestone payments, $1m from the sale of Oncimmune’s US subsidiary’s operations, and direct operating cost savings of $2.2m/year. The sale of the US CLIA-certified laboratory will take effect from 1st November.  The two deals add to teh existing network of distribution deals in Europe, Latin American, India and China.

The ECLS study, conducted by NHS Scotland, represents an important landmark and is believed to be the largest randomised controlled study for the early detection of lung cancer using blood-derived biomarkers. It recruited 12,210 patients, each of whom were followed up for a minimum of two years. The study met its primary end-point showing that the use of EarlyCDT Lung with subsequent X-ray and computerised tomography (CT) scan reduced the incidence of patients with late-stage lung cancer or unclassified presentation at diagnosis, compared to standard clinical practice. Data are hoped to be presented as a late breaking abstract at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) World Conference on Lung Cancer on  7-10 September 2019, with a concurrent publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Oncimmune is also gearing up to start a phased population-based evaluation in Scotland to assess the implications of diagnosis with EarlyCDT Lung on survival and mortality in a real-world setting. The initial phase is expected to recruit up to 200,000 patients and to last two years.

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