Life Technologies Launches Pervenio⿢ Lung RS, A Risk Stratification Test For Early Stage Lung Cancer

CARLSBAD, Calif., Sept. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:LIFE) today announced the launch of Pervenio™ Lung RS. First-of-its-kind, the molecular test has been documented to reliably identify early stage lung cancer patients who are at high risk for mortality following surgery. It also fulfills an unmet need for prognostic information to guide preventative treatment and improve disease management.

Lung cancer patients face a 25-65 percent mortality rate even after successful surgery, primarily because the disease often spreads early. Current methods for lung cancer staging are not effective for identifying those patients who likely harbor undetected metastasis. By comparison, patients with colon or breast cancer, for example, can expect surgical cure rates of greater than 90 percent.

"Many lung cancer patients who are initially diagnosed with early stage disease are dying from recurrences without having received any early post-operative intervention," said Michael Mann, M.D., associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, who co-developed the test with David Jablons, M.D., chief of general thoracic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

"Published guidelines already urge doctors to identify early stage patients at high risk of death, so that early chemotherapy can be used to reduce that risk and save lives," said Dr. Mann. "Pervenio Lung RS has been documented to better identify the earliest stage, high-risk patients than the criteria currently suggested by these guidelines."

Accurate and Reliable Risk Stratification of Early Stage Patients for Better-Informed Decisions  Currently, early stage patients who are thought to be at low-risk are typically prescribed a course of monitoring following surgery, an approach frequently called "watchful waiting." Disease recurs, however, in a large percentage of these patients, usually at distant sites, indicating that the patient harbored metastases that were not detected at the time of surgery. Also, by the time disease recurs, treatment by chemotherapy or other therapies very rarely achieves long-term survival.

"Better prognostic information will enable more informed decisions in the management of early stage lung cancer," said Dr. Mann. "Many Stage II patients decline potentially life-saving intervention, not knowing what their true risk of death might be. The Pervenio test is the first to document better discrimination of high risk patients in both Stage IA and IB compared to published high-risk criteria for Stage IB alone."

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