OncoMethylome blood screening

Liege, Belgium-based molecular diagnostics firm OncoMethylome Sciences (EBR:ONCOB) announced today it has developed blood tests that can screen for colorectal cancer (CRC) with 90% accuracy. The blood test screens for genetic markers of the disease (SYNE1 and FOXE1, if you must know) and is extremely inexpensive-as little as $10 per test.

Compare that to the only options today: complex procedures and/or unpleasant examinations (colonoscopy, fecal analysis) which can only be performed by experienced practitioners with expensive equipment. Therefore potential patients are often discouraged from undergoing examinations; according to cancer.org, only 40% of CRCs are detected at an early stage since at this stage CRC usually does not even have symptoms. After CRC has spread regionally, only 68% of patients are expected to survive past 5 years. So such a blood test is great news, especially when CRC is the third-most common cancer in the U.S. (accounting for 9% of all cancer deaths).OncoMethylome also said it is currently in talks with large companies concerning licensing rights. With such a breakthrough, the firm should be able to ink a profitable deal, and OncoMethylome needs it.

Just end of last month when the Euronext Brussels-listed company reported its half-year 2009 financial results, it disclosed that revenues in the first six month of 2009 fell 17 percent to €1.3 million from €1.5 million in the first half of 2008. It was then that CFO Philip Devine said that same day in an interview with Reuters that OncoMethylome was inking deals with other companies for its blood-screening cancer test and that contracts "are not signed but ready to be signed."