South City Company Releases Cancer Findings

South San Francisco biotechnology company Veracyte co-announced the publishing of new data today that indicates that the the Afirma Gene Expression Classifer test can help patients at risk of thyroid cancer avoid surgery.

According to the American Cancer Society, thyroid cancer is the fastest-increasing cancer in the United States, with an estimated 56,460 new cases expected in 2012.

Nearly one third of the 450,000 procedures done annually to rule out the cancer in patients are inconclusive, and standard medical recommendations for many of these cases are to remove the entire thyroid to complete the diagnosis.  

The surgery is invasive and costly and can mean lifelong thyroid hormone therapy for many people, according to Veracyte, but between 70 and 80 percent of the patients turn out to be healthy.

"Our data suggest that physicians in this study were sufficiently confident in the reliability of the molecular test to be comfortable monitoring patients with benign genomic test results, rather than sending them to surgery for diagnosis,” said Dr. Brian McIver, co-principal investigator of the new study. “This could ultimately save thousands - perhaps even tens of thousands - of patients each year from unnecessary thyroid surgery."

Veracyte co-announces the publication with Genzyme, a Massachusetts-based company. The data were published online in the journal Thyroid.

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