Real-world clinical data has shown that the Percepta Bronchial Genomic Classifier can help identify patients with a low risk of lung cancer, significantly reducing the need for invasive, risky, and expensive procedures to ensure a correct diagnosis and management strategy.

The data were part of an oral presentation titled, “Prospective Utility of a Bronchial Genomic Classifier for Lung Cancer Detection: Interim Results From a Multicenter Prospective Registry,” shared at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2017 Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada.

The Percepta classifier is a diagnostic tool developed by Veracyte. It combines information on expression levels of 23 lung cancer-related genes to help identify patients with a low risk of lung cancer. With this new tool, medical teams can make informed and cost-effective decisions about how to better monitor their patients.

The diagnostic efficiency of Percepta Bronchial Genomic Classifier has been demonstrated in several studies, and its clinical validation was reported in a study titled, “A Bronchial Genomic Classifier for the Diagnostic Evaluation of Lung Cancer,” published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The performance of the Percepta classifier was also evaluated in a multicenter study assessing its impact on pulmonary lesion management in a real-world clinical setting. The study included over 390 patients at 43 medical centers who were former or current smokers indicated for bronchoscopy after the detection of pulmonary lesions by computer tomography scans.

A bronchial tissue sample was collected during bronchoscopy for genetic evaluation by the Percepta classifier.

Data collected from the genetic classifier test allowed more than 35% of the patients to be reclassified from an intermediate risk to a low risk following the test. This led to a reduction by more than 50% of medical recommendations for invasive and costly procedures to gather additional diagnostic information, compared with recommendations made by the same physicians in the absence of Percepta’s test results.

“Patients with lung nodules that are not clearly benign or malignant present a challenge to physicians and often are recommended to undergo invasive procedures so that a lung cancer isn’t missed,” Hans J. Lee, MD, associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of the study, said in a press release.

“Our findings suggest that patients classified as low risk by the Percepta classifier were monitored with CT [computer tomography] imaging rather than being directed to surgery,” Lee added.

In addition, the study revealed that in 75% of the cases, physicians chose to rely on the Percepta classifier in patients who could benefit the most — those with a low to intermediate pre-test risk of cancer.

“This prospective multicenter study provided the first, significant real-world use of the Percepta classifier for the evaluation of lung cancer,” said Neil Barth, MD, chief medical officer at Veracyte. “It not only substantiates the results from our clinical validation study, it further shows that, in practice, physicians use the test as intended and that their treatment decision is impacted by the Percepta test results. This translates to better patient care and far fewer costly invasive diagnostic procedures.”

The Percepta classifier is currently available to patients in the United States who are covered by Medicare.