BioPharma, Diagnostics

Biodesix acquires Seattle-based developer of blood-based lung nodule test

Acquisition of Integrated Diagnostics gives Biodesix control of test to determine if nodules are benign or malignant.

A company specializing in molecular diagnostics and liquid biopsy tests has acquired a firm developing a test designed to determine whether nodules in patients’ lungs are cancerous.

Biodesix, based in Boulder, Colorado, said Monday that it had acquired Seattle-based Integrated Diagnostics, also known as Indi, under undisclosed financial terms. Indi’s lead oncology product is Xpresys Lung, or XL2, a noninvasive, blood-based test that measures blood proteins to identify lung nodules with a high probability of being benign. More than 1.6 million lung nodules are discovered in patients every year, and determining whether they are benign or malignant is often a costly and challenging process, according to Biodesix.

Results of the prospective clinical trial PANOPTIC showed that XL2 was 98 percent effective at distinguishing benign from malignant nodules.

In March, Biodesix announced a follow-on sale to increase the size of its offering of Series G shares, while entering in a debt refinancing agreement with Innovatus Capital Partners for a $23 million term loan. Previously, it had raised $22 million in a Series F round, completed in February 2016.

The market for liquid biopsy is expected to reach nearly $6 billion by 2030, according to a report released in May by Grand View Research.

Meanwhile, last month, early results of a study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology showed preliminary evidence that a blood test may be able to detect early-stage lung cancer. The Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas, or CCGA study, is enrolling 15,000 subjects across 141 sites in the US and Canada, 70 percent of whom have cancer and 30 percent of whom do not. With 12,000 patients enrolled, the initial sub-analysis included 127 patients with Stage I-IV lung cancer tested with three assays, finding that the biologic signal for lung cancer was comparable across the assays and that the assays could detect lung cancer with a low rate of false-positive findings.

Photo: jxfzxy, Getty Images

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