Labtests Exclusive Sales for Novel Diagnostic Cxbladder

NZX ANNOUNCEMENT MARCH 2012

Labtests Exclusive Sales for Pacific Edge’s Novel Diagnostic Cxbladder® in Auckland and Northland

Pacific Edge Limited (NZX: PEB) and Labtests Limited are pleased to advise that they have signed an agreement to market and sell Pacific Edge’s (PE) novel diagnostic test for the detection of bladder cancer, Cxbladder®

The agreement gives Labtests the exclusive right to market and sell Cxbladder® to urologists and general practitioners (GPs) in the Auckland and Northland regions. Pacific Edge will provide all laboratory analytical services from its diagnostic laboratory based in Dunedin for all the tests sold by Labtests. Pacific Edge will retain the rights to the rest of New Zealand for the marketing and sale of Cxbladder®. The terms of the license agreement are confidential.

Labtests, which is owned by the Healthscope Group a leading private health care provider in Australia, is a NZ based pathology services provider contracted to the Auckland Regional District Health Board to supply services to 1.5 million Aucklanders and Northlanders. Labtests is IANZ accredited and employs 600 staff including15 pathologists. A team of Labtests’s medical liaison specialists will provide regular coverage of clinicians and GP’s in these regions.

Cxbladder® is a non-invasive, accurate test that enables the early detection of bladder cancer from a small volume of urine. It provides general practitioners and urologists with a quick, cost effective and accurate measure of the presence of the cancer and provides urologists with the opportunity to reduce their reliance on the need for invasive tests such as cystoscopy. The recently completed multi-centre international clinical study recruited 467 patients from Australia and New Zealand. Results showed that Cxbladder® outperformed all of the benchmark technologies in the trial and detected nearly all of the tumours of concern to a urologist; 100% of T1, 100% of T2, 100% of Tis and 96% of all high grade tumours.

Bladder cancer is the cancer with the 9th highest incidence globally and has the 5th highest incidence for men. One of the early symptoms of bladder cancer is the presence of blood in the urine, haematuria. People with haematuria often present to their general practitioner before being referred to a urologist.

Bladder cancer has the highest total medical costs of any cancer and in the US, approaching US$200,000 per patient from detection until death. In Australia and New Zealand there are expected to be in excess of 55,000 people presenting to their healthcare provider this year with blood in their urine, (haematuria) often a precursor to bladder cancer, and it is anticipated that the Australian and New Zealand healthcare system could invest in excess of $50 million per annum in investigating haematuria. Cxbladder® is expected to completely replace cytology and be used to complement cystoscopy in the clinical care path for patients presenting to clinicians with haematuria.

Pacific Edge Limited (PEB):
Pacific Edge (PE) is a New Zealand based biomedical and diagnostics company specialising in the discovery and commercialisation of diagnostic and prognostic technology for the early detection and monitoring of cancer. Products in development and in clinical trials are accurate and simple to use genomic and proteomic tools for the earlier detection, improved characterisation and better management of gastric, bladder, colorectal, endometrial cancers and melanoma. The company has recently completed and released its first product for the detection of bladder cancer, Cxbladder®.

D Darling
Chief Executive Officer
Pacific Edge Ltd

ENDS

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