Integrated Diagnostics has an interesting proposal for a blood test. Instead of telling doctors that lung cancer is present in a patient with lung nodules, it’s aiming to tell them when it’s not present.
The Seattle-based company has just pulled in a $30 million Series B led by Baird Capital and joined by InterWest Partners and the Wellcome Trust to commercialize its test, plus $17 million in non-dilutive debt financing. The financing follows a $30 million Series A raised shortly after its 2009 launch.
Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in the U.S., and an estimated 224,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year.
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It’s usually caught when lung nodules – small, oval-shaped growths in the lungs – appear in chest X-rays or CT scans. Most of the time, lung nodules are benign, especially if they’re very small. But a variety of factors including a person’s age, medical history and the shape of the nodule can affect how likely it is to be cancerous.
So when they’re spotted, physicians and patients must decide whether to do a biopsy, a pricey procedure that comes with potential complications.
Integrated Diagnostics says its test is designed to help make that decision between continuing active surveillance through CT scans or ordering a biopsy. But the company is careful to say that the test is not approved to detect lung cancer. Rather, it’s intended to identify non-cancerous nodules with the goal of preventing unnecessary invasive and costly procedures like biopsies and surgeries.
The test, Xpresys Lung, does that by measuring a set of 11 circulating proteins associated with lung cancer. Indi says it’s intended for use in patients older than 40 who have nodules between 8 mm and 30 mm in size.
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A few other venture-backed startups are developing blood tests to help physicians diagnose lung cancer. Guardant Health, backed by Sequoia Capital, is developing a gene-based test, and GeneCentric Diagnostics is hoping it can help stratify lung cancer patients into subtypes with a blood test. However, only a very small portion of cancer biomarker tests developed ever make it into clinical practice.
With the $47 million in new funding, Indi says it will further commercialize its test, which launched last fall, and continue developing other proteomic blood tests based on its platform technology. It’s also working on getting insurers on board to cover the cost of the $4,250 test, CEO Al Luederer told Xconomy – a crucial step toward adoption.
Indi was founded by Dr. Lee Hood, who has co-founded more than a dozen biotech companies including Amgen and Applied Biosystems.
