Oncimmune Holdings PLC (AIM:ONC) has announced a collaboration with Siemens Healthineers, the German med-tech group, to improve malignancy risk assessment of indeterminate pulmonary nodules (IPNs).
The collaboration will combine Oncimmune's EarlyCDT Lung blood test with Siemens Healthineers' AI-Rad Companion chest CT, an AI-powered radiology assistant.
By combining autoantibody biomarker data with imaging results, the two companies anticipate that malignancy risk assessment of IPNs can be improved, Oncimmune said.
The collaboration will also access data from the Early Detection of Cancer of the Lung Scotland (ECLS) trial, a large randomised study into the utility of EarlyCDT Lung in asymptomatic screening.
Lung cancer has the highest mortality rate and one of the worst five-year survival rates of all cancers.
Dr Adam M Hill, chief executive of Oncimmune, noted that early detection and the introduction of screening programmes have the potential to substantially improve lung cancer healthcare and clinical outcomes.
The collaboration aims to improve diagnostic accuracy in patients with more hard-to-detect lung cancer, he added.
"It is our hope that combining this test with Siemens Healthineers' AI-Rad Companion Chest CT will improve diagnostic accuracy in those patients with more difficult-to-diagnose lung cancer," Hill explained.