Date:- 10 January, 2020
Five major private medical insurances in the UK cover Immunoscore® test for all their patients with localised colon cancer to make them benefit from this personalised and precision medicine tool
HalioDx, the immuno-oncology diagnostic company, today announced that the Clinical Coding & Schedule Development (CCSD) Working Group has recognised the utility and robustness of the Immunoscore® assay by granting it a diagnostic CCSD code (code: 0002T), after reviewing the clinical evidence of Immunoscore® bringing practice changing of oncologists’ post-surgical chemotherapy decisions for stage II and III colon cancer patients.
“Obtaining this CCSD code is a crucial step towards making the Immunoscore more accessible to colon cancer patients in the UK market.“ said Vincent Fert, CEO of HalioDx. ”We are pursuing similar efforts in Europe, Asia and in the US to make Immunoscore® accessible to patients and oncologists for risk-assessment and appraisal of potential benefits of adjuvant chemotherapy.”
To date, five of main private health insurers in the UK have agreed to cover all their insured patients with stage II and III colon cancer corresponding to over 4 million English lives and accounts for 65% of the insured market.
This achievement is a result of a successful collaboration with HalioDx partner, Everything Genetic Ltd, who are the exclusive distributor and promoter of the Immunoscore® test in the UK market.
“Having major private health insurers now cover Immunoscore® for all stage II and III colon cancer patients indicates three key points: firstly that the significant need for better risk stratification for this large group of patients and the general trend to understand a persons risk of recurrent cancer, secondly the immune response is a main indicator, and also that the solid and sizable data sets behind the international Immunoscore® validation study. This assay is simply ground breaking and unlike any other and a major focus for EGL going into 2020 and beyond.” added, James Price, CEO of Everything Genetic.
Immunoscore® is a risk-assessment tool in localised colon cancer that provides independent and superior prognostic value than the usual tumor risk parameters, and should be used as an adjunct to the TNM classification (Pagès F et al. The Lancet 2018, Sinicrope F et al. JCO 2018 36.4 suppl; 614). In addition, Immunoscore® is predictive of response to chemotherapy in stage III patients and helps to define the optimal duration of adjuvant treatment (Pagès F et al JCO 2019 37.17 suppl; 3513 ).