PEB Announces Agreement with Northern Health in Australia

9 December 2021

PACIFIC EDGE ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT WITH NORTHERN HEALTH IN AUSTRALIA

Cancer diagnostics company Pacific Edge (NZX/ASX: PEB) has today reached its first commercial agreement of scale in Australia with Northern Health, a major provider of healthcare and hospital services to Melbourne’s rapidly growing outer northern suburbs.

Northern Health provides healthcare services to the rapidly growing suburbs in Melbourne’s outer north through four campuses across the region, with over 5,700 professional staff. Northern Health’s urology needs make it similar in size to New Zealand public Healthcare provider, Canterbury DHB.

Initially, urologists at Northern Health will use Cxbladder Monitor to help manage patients undergoing surveillance following treatment of their bladder cancer. Cxbladder Monitor will be used to identify those patients who can safely forego or defer a flexible cystoscopy at their next scheduled hospital visit. Once implemented, the service will be extended to use Cxbladder Triage for the evaluation of patients referred to urology for investigation of haematuria (blood in the urine and a key indicator of bladder cancer).

Divisional Director, Surgery and Consultant Urologist at Northern Health, Dr Dennis Gyomber, said: “We have built up our knowledge and experience with Cxbladder over time which, together with the conversations and published evidence from a number of New Zealand hospitals already using the test, provides us with the assurance to use Cxbladder in our setting.

“At Northern Health we are aiming to establish ourselves as a Centre of Excellence in Victoria in the diagnosis, treatment and management of bladder cancer. The ability to manage patients using Cxbladder changes the model of care and means many patients will safely avoid the need for invasive cystoscopy procedures and hospital visits, providing obvious patient and clinical benefits. This is especially so when our patients and hospitals are also periodically challenged by access and capacity issues during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Brent Pownall, Vice President of Commercial and Franchise at Pacific Edge, said: “We are delighted to have concluded our first institutional customer agreement in Australia. It is fitting that it is with Northern Health as Northern Hospital Epping was one of the early Australian hospital customers to embark on the evaluation of Cxbladder. We look forward to working with Northern Health and bringing other healthcare organisations on board in Australia.”

Northern Health will coordinate patient sample collection, and shipping to Pacific Edge for analysis at its CLIA approved and IANZ-accredited laboratory in Dunedin, New Zealand.

CEO of Pacific Edge, David Darling, said: “This agreement in Australia is another in-market validation of Cxbladder’s clinical utility in a large healthcare network. Northern Health concluded that the strong foundation of clinical evidence in support of Cxbladder’s performance and the strong adoption by New Zealand’s healthcare providers have been important elements in bringing this agreement to fruition. We are working with a number of institutional healthcare organisations in Australia and are focused on transitioning them from User Programmes to commercial agreements.”

ENDS


For more information contact:

David Darling
Chief Executive Officer
Pacific Edge Ltd
P: +64 (3) 479 5800

OVERVIEW www.pacificedge.co.nz www.pacificedgedx.com
Pacific Edge Limited (NZX: PEB) is a New Zealand publicly listed, cancer diagnostic company specialising in the discovery and commercialisation of diagnostic and prognostic tests for better detection and management of cancer. Its Cxbladder suite of non-invasive, simple to use and accurate diagnostic tests provide actionable results, and better detection and management of urothelial cancer.

The company is developing and commercialising its range of Cxbladder bladder cancer tests globally through its wholly owned central laboratories in New Zealand and the USA. The company’s products have been tested and validated in international multi-centre clinical studies.

ABOUT Cxbladder Triage www.cxbladder.com
Cxbladder Triage combines the power of the genomic biomarkers with additional phenotypic and clinical risk factors to accurately identify patients with haematuria who have a low probability of bladder cancer and may not require a more extensive urological evaluation. Cxbladder Triage is a tool for use by clinicians and physicians in primary evaluation of patients with haematuria and is intended to reduce the need for an expensive and invasive work-up in patients who have a low probability of having urothelial carcinoma.

ABOUT Cxbladder Detect www.cxbladder.com
Cxbladder Detect enables the non-invasive detection of bladder and other urinary tract cancers from a small volume of a patients’ urine. Cxbladder Detect provides clinicians with a quick, cost effective and accurate measure of the presence of the cancer as an effective adjunct to cystoscopy.

ABOUT Cxbladder Monitor www.cxbladder.com
Cxbladder Monitor allows urologists to monitor bladder cancer patients for recurrence of the disease. Bladder cancer has a recurrence rate of 50-80% and requires life-long surveillance. Cxbladder Monitor accurately identifies patients with a prior history of urothelial cancer (UC) whose Cxbladder Monitor score shows that they have a low probability of recurrent urothelial carcinoma. Cxbladder Monitor is designed to be used as the preferred adjunct test to cystoscopy in the management of patients for ongoing evaluation of recurrent bladder cancer.

ABOUT Cxbladder Resolve www.cxbladder.com
Cxbladder Resolve identifies those patients who are likely to have aggressive or more advanced bladder cancer. Cxbladder Resolve, when used as part of the primary evaluation of haematuria and/or in conjunction with other Cxbladder tests (Triage, Detect), is designed to assist clinicians by accurately identifying patients with a high probability of having high grade or late stage bladder cancer, for whom alternative or expedited treatment options may be warranted, or who can be prioritised for further investigation in high throughput settings.

Refer to www.cxbladder.com for more information.

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Announcement PDF