The accounts of medical diagnostic company Pacific Edge remain in the red but chairman Chris Swann said it was on the verge of a commercial breakthrough.
While reporting a net loss for the six months to September 30 of $1.398 million, Mr Swann said in a statement that its bladder cancer detection test and colorectal cancer prognostic gene signature have in the past year both successfully completed clinical or validation trials.
These results gave Pacific Edge some certainty of the type of commercial products it would release to market, Mr Swann said.
The $1.398 million loss was better than a budgeted loss of $1.449 million and the $1.415 loss reported for the corresponding period last year.
The result reflected the scale of investment in clinical trials, product development and intellectual property, but also the policy of writing off all research and development expenditure until there was some certainty of cost recovery.
During the year, shareholders invested an extra $4.7 million to allow the commercial roll out of the bladder cancer test Cxbladder, to take its colorectal cancer prognostic product to the market and advance other products in the pipeline.
Cxbladder will be offered to clinicians and physicians as a triage test for detecting bladder cancer in people who have blood in their urine.
In clinical trials, 467 patients in Australia and New Zealand were tested and all late stage tumours, 95% of high grade tumours and 75% of low grade tumours were detected, performances Mr Swann said were well above those offered by competing products.
There are about 300 urologists in Australia and New Zealand, and Mr Swann said that market would be its focus before tackling larger markets.
Urine samples collected from patients were sent to a newly built laboratory in Dunedin for testing, and he estimated the market would generate about 50,000 tests annually.
In contrast, the United States market was huge, with 15,000 urologists and 63,000 new cases diagnosed each year.
An estimated one million samples required testing.
Investigating those cases using existing tools could cost the US healthcare system $NZ750 million to $NZ1.5 billion.
Pacific Edge's colorectal cancer prognostic gene signature has successfully completed validation studies in Europe, and the company in 2006 granted an exclusive licence for the product to Signature Diagnostics, with commercialisation expected after validation of clinical trials.
Mr Swann said Pacific Edge would refine the gene signature and modify the technical platform to make it more accessible to clinicians and pathologists.
