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Highmark Health to Evaluate Biocept Liquid Biopsy Platform

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Highmark Health announced today that it will study the clinical and economic impact of Biocept's Target Selector liquid biopsy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

The 12-month evaluation is being conducted through Highmark's Vital Innovation Program, a test-and-learn platform that facilitates real-world testing of early-stage medical innovations to produce evidence related to patient experience, and clinical and financial outcomes. Evidence generated through the program may help accelerate the payor coverage and clinical use of new technologies.

Highmark said that more than 100 patients at affiliate Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute — including newly diagnosed, treatment-naive advanced NSCLC patients and NSCLC patients progressing after initial therapy — will be profiled using the Biocept technology, as well as receive tissue biopsy.

The results will be used to determine whether Target Selector can improve the molecular profiling rate of advanced NSCLC, Highmark said.

"We hope to further build the body of evidence supporting our Target Selector platform's ability to help physicians rapidly obtain the actionable information they need to design personalized treatment plans for their patients," Biocept President and CEO Michael Nall said in a statement.

Last month, Biocept partnered with the UCSD Moores Cancer Center to test the ability of Target Selector assays to predict cancer recurrence and treatment response.

In June, Highmark announced that it is evaluating YouScript's Precision Prescribing Software under the Vital Innovation program.

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