NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Immunovia and the University of Liverpool have entered into a collaboration to validate Immunovia's proteomic blood test for early detection of pancreatic cancer in a prospective clinical study.
The study, which aims to validate Immunovia's Immray PanCan-d test, will start in the second half of 2016 and run for three years across sites in the US and Europe.
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Pancreatic Biomedical Research Unit at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital is the first announced site for the study. It is the only NIHR-funded specialist unit in the UK doing research into pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.
The center "will play a crucial role by contributing a wealth of knowledge and providing access to the largest registry in Europe of individuals with a genetic predisposition for pancreatic cancer: The European Registry of Hereditary Pancreatitis and Familial Pancreatic Cancer," Immunovia CEO Mats Grahn said in a statement.
Late last year, Immunovia completed a 1,400-sample retrospective trial for the test that found it was able to distinguish between 149 patients with stage I and II pancreatic cancer and 700 healthy controls with accuracy of 96 percent. It distinguished between these healthy controls and patients in all stages of pancreatic cancer with accuracy of 98 percent.