National Accounts Manager Appointed For USA

National Accounts Manager Appointed For USA

Michael Maltby has joined Pacific Edge Diagnostics USA (PEDUSA) as the new Director of National Accounts and Payer Relations.

Pacific Edge Diagnostics USA, Chief Executive Officer Jackie Walker says Michael has over 15 years experience in diagnostics, pharmaceutical, and medical device sales and national accounts management with a great track record of success.

Michael was most recently with Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine and prior to that spent 12 years with Prometheus Laboratories until it was sold to Nestle Health Science. Michael has been instrumental in launching an array of molecular diagnostic and therapeutic products.

“We are delighted to have Michael join the PEDUSA team. He will play a key role in the launch of Cxbladder and its billing and reimbursement strategy execution.”

PEDUSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pacific Edge, received regulatory approval in March to begin processing Cxbladder tests at its purpose built laboratory in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Michael Maltby joins a team, led by PEDUSA Chief Executive Officer Jackie Walker, who have a wealth of experience in launching and managing biomedical products in the USA, the worlds largest health market.

ABOUT PACIFIC EDGE

Pacific Edge Limited (NZX: PEB) is a New Zealand based cancer diagnostic 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 cancers and melanoma. The Company has recently completed and released its first product for the detection of bladder cancer, Cxbladder, and is actively marketing the product to urologists in New Zealand, Australia and soon to be Spain and the USA.

www.pacificedge.co.nz

ABOUT PACIFIC EDGE DIAGNOSTICS

Pacific Edge takes its exciting cancer detection tests to market through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Pacific Edge Diagnostics NZ Limited and Pacific Edge Diagnostics USA Limited, and selected commercial partners in Australia and Spain, Healthscope Pathology and Oryzon respectively.

www.pacificedgedx.com

ABOUT Cxbladder

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 published, Journal of Urology in September 2012, multi-centre international clinical study recruited 485 patients from Australia and New Zealand. Results show that Cxbladder out-performed all other benchmark technologies in the clinical trial and detected nearly all of the tumours of concern to a urologist; At 85% specificity the test sees 100% of T1, T2, T3, Tis and greater than 95% of high grade tumours.

www.cxbladder.com

ABOUT BLADDER CANCER

Globally, bladder cancer has the 9th highest incidence and the 4th 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 on to a urologist.

There are a number of at risk occupations that have shown a much higher incidence of bladder cancer.

Fire fighters and fire control officers have shown in a US study to have a twice the incidence of bladder cancer over non fire fighters. Smoking is a significant contributing factor (over 50% in males and 33% in females, and approximately one of every two new incidences of bladder cancer is linked to smoking).

Exposure to certain industrial chemicals or carcinogens increases risks for some occupations e.g. hairdressers, painters, printers, fire fighters and metal workers and chemical engineers. Incidence increases with age so the older you are, the greater the potential for bladder cancer.

Bladder cancer has a very high recurrence rate of approximately 50%-70% with up to 30% of these recurring as later stage tumours. This is a higher recurrence than for skin cancer! However, bladder cancers are highly treatable, especially if detected in the early stages. If diagnosed early there is a much higher probability of survival for early stage tumours relative to later stage tumours.

This makes timely and regular surveillance and monitoring of this cancer a key element of the clinical process and of the individuals annual healthcare plan.

ENDS

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