Pacific Edge is ending the year as it began, launching new products and aiming for new markets.
The Dunedin company announced it had released Cxbladder Monitor, its third new product in a suite of tests for the detection and management of bladder cancer.
The test is available in New Zealand and will be launched in other markets progressively over 2016 and 2017, starting with the United States later next year, chief executive David Darling says.
"Cxbladder Monitor will quickly and easily provide urologists with greater certainty of their clinical evaluations, the perfect adjunct test to cystoscopy.''
The monitor was for the use of urologists monitoring patients for recurrence of bladder cancer.
It was designed to be part of an ongoing surveillance regime to quickly and accurately identify those who had a low probability of recurrent cancers, he said.
It also provided ongoing reassurance to clinicians and their patients the cancer had not returned, or supported the case for further urological investigation.
Cxbladder Monitor followed in the footsteps of Pacific Edge's first two molecular diagnostic texts, Detect and Triage.
Triage ruled out patients who had a low probability of having cancer and Detect was used to detect cancer.
Both were used in the early evaluation of patients who presented with haematuria - blood in the urine, an early symptom of bladder cancer.
Dr Darling said the introduction of Monitor rounded out the Cxbladder family of products, providing a one-stop-shop solution from preliminary evaluation of haematuria to diagnosis within the urological evaluation as an adjunct to cystoscopy, through to post-treatment surveillance for recurrence.
Depending on the stage and grade of the initial cancer diagnosis, medical guidelines advocated follow-up cystocopies every three months for the first couple of years post-treatment, then six-monthly after that and annually after five years.
Adding to that, 50% to 70% of high-grade tumours recurred and that reset the clock for surveillance, meaning a longer period of evaluation and even more cystocopies, he said.
At a glance
Cxbladder Detect: Detect is a proprietary, accurate molecular diagnostic test enabling the non-invasive detection of bladder and other urinary tract cancers from a small volume of urine.
Cxbladder Triage: Triage combines the power of genomic biomarkers with extra phenotypic and clinical risk factors to accurately identify and remove patients with haematuria who have a low probability of urothelial cancer, from needing to have a full urological work-up.
Cxbladder Monitor: The new product identifies patients with a low probability of having a recurrent disease.
