NEW YORK – Skin cancer diagnostics company Castle Biosciences reported after the close of the market on Thursday preliminary performance results for the fourth quarter 2019 that showed a 37 percent year-over-year increase in volume for the company's DecisionDx-Melanoma test.
For the three months ended Dec. 31, 2019, the company delivered 4,480 DecisionDx-Melanoma test reports, compared to 3,270 reports during Q4 2018. Castle also delivered 434 DecisionDx-UM test reports for uveal melanoma in Q4, up 13 percent from 385 reports in Q4 2018.
The firm also preliminarily reported delivery of 15,529 DecisionDx-Melanoma test reports for full-year 2019, up 29 percent from 12,032 reports in 2018. In 2019, the number of new ordering clinicians for DecisionDx-Melanoma rose 24 percent year-over-year, and the number of total ordering clinicians in 2019 for DecisionDx-Melanoma increased 32 percent to 3,927, year-over-year.
The company said it delivered 1,526 DecisionDx-UM test reports in 2019, up 8 percent from 1,413 reports during 2018.
"We are pleased with our solid execution in 2019, particularly the acceleration in DecisionDx-Melanoma volume. We attribute this growth to a combination of ongoing evidence development, which included eight peer-reviewed publications, as well as the early 2019 commercial expansion," Castle President and CEO Derek Maetzold said in a statement. "We believe the substantial volume growth in DecisionDx-Melanoma is providing more patients diagnosed with early-stage cutaneous melanoma the opportunity to have informed discussions with their doctors and potentially improve treatment decisions."
Maetzold also noted that the company remains on track to launch two additional skin cancer products in the second half of 2020 — the DecisionDx-SCC gene expression profile test for use in patients diagnosed with high-risk cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, and a skin cancer product for use in patients with a suspicious pigmented lesion.
"We believe these two late-stage pipeline products will increase our estimated total addressable US market by more than $1.4 billion, for an estimated total addressable US market of $2.0 billion for current and pipeline products," he said.
Castle reported that it had cash and cash equivalents of approximately $99 million at the end of 2019.