Immunovia detects pancreatic cancer with a blood test

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Pancreatic cancer is known to be a serious, often fatal cancer, which, due to vague and mild symptoms in its early stages, is unfortunately often found too late. A correct diagnosis requires imaging and also involves taking a biopsy.

Immunovia AB has long been developing blood test-based diagnostics. https://immunovia.com/ Things have already gone wrong once when the test failed to get approval in the USA. They have gone from one share issue and crisis to another, and for many investors, this has meant losing their invested capital.

Is bankruptcy looming there? Or maybe not. Now approvals have been obtained, and the commercial use of the blood test will begin in the USA on September 2, 2025: MFN.se > Immunovia > Immunovia set to launch PancreaSure in the US on September 2nd, shares commercial strategy

What if this turns into a healthy business instead of bankruptcy? Initially, commercialization will focus on diagnostics for high-risk groups. In the EU and USA, 150,000-170,000 pancreatic cancers are diagnosed annually. If tests are performed ten times the number of diagnoses, and the test price is about $995, we are easily talking about over a billion dollars in annual revenue. At this point, much less would suffice; as of this writing, the market capitalization is about 20 million euros.

Bankruptcy or a 100-bagger?

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The worst cancer. Only weeks from diagnosis to grave. Though it depends on many factors. Many acquaintances have passed before I even had time to react. It’s interesting that these can slowly (perhaps) be overcome.

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Hmm. In Europe, imaging is probably a cheaper method for that; in the US, the cost is likely on par with imaging studies.

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Thanks for bringing this up. I had forgotten about this too, as nothing seemed to come of it. Now, in terms of its share price behavior, it looks good; it’s in an uptrend. I definitely need to look into it more closely. One would assume there are competitors. An important question is also whether Immunovia has the platform capability to expand to other cancers that benefit from screening, or if this is all there is.

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Haimasyöpä - Kaikki syövästä there’s an article about diagnostics there, which is not a trivial matter at all.

The company’s own press release had more detailed information about the price level. It has approvals, but so far the test is not reimbursable in the USA and can only be obtained by self-paying, with prices starting from 750 USD.

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The stock price is surging. Sales start on September 2nd in the US.

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I became a shareholder in this a week ago, guided by some strange intuition. I don’t quite understand what came over me. Perhaps Faron’s enthusiastic talk was partly the reason. It would be incredible if these diseases, which cause so much sorrow and suffering, could be brought under control. Am I a humane person, I don’t know.

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A small update to this thread:

Immunovia is raising 100 million kronor through a rights issue. The matter still requires confirmation from the general meeting:

Compared to the company’s market value, the sum is indeed staggering, but commercialization doesn’t happen by itself. The issue is certainly not a surprise, as cash reserves are running low.

And now it is available: the Pancreasure blood test can be ordered at one’s own expense from seven different hospitals that research and treat pancreatic cancer. Of these, three are university hospitals.

The next steps are partners for broader commercialization and reimbursement in the USA. In commercialization, I personally believe that reimbursement plays a smaller role than it usually does in health technology. In the revenue model, one inevitably encounters the question of whether you would dig out 995 USD from your last savings if you have symptoms indicative of pancreatic cancer and know that a blood test is practically the only method by which pancreatic cancer can be reliably detected before it’s too late. This last sentence makes determining the company’s market value extremely difficult. The market value is currently 279 MSEK.

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It’s been a difficult target, with interesting fluctuations recently. And they certainly won’t calm down with the things you mentioned. Pharmaceutical companies offer excitement to life. I own some.

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Part of the Inova Health system, Inova Schar Cancer adopts Immunovia’s Pancreasure blood test

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I briefly familiarized myself with the results of Immunovia’s Verifi study. They reported a sensitivity of 78% and a specificity of 92% for the “general” population. If compared to the CA 19-9 marker, which is currently the only(?) widely accepted biomarker for pancreatic cancer, then this is indeed more accurate. CA 19-9 sensitivity is around 80%, although weaker specifically in these early-stage pancreatic cancers. Specificity is just over 80%.

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So, from a medical standpoint, it looks good. Of course, the number of patients in the study was small.

With a quick Google search, I found a few private labs in Helsinki where I could order a CA 19-9 test for myself at my own expense for about 80e. So, this Immunovia test has a price… I don’t think an average layperson would think much about sensitivity and specificity if they want to screen themselves for pancreatic cancer for some reason. Would the company’s future, however, lie in the hope that the test gets reimbursement and is more widely adopted in diagnostics in the public sector? If it can reduce the number of “unnecessary” MRI scans and needle biopsies, one would think it would be cheaper for the hospital.

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That is precisely the problem with tests of this kind. If a rare disease like pancreatic cancer is screened, the test should be very accurate to avoid unnecessary false positives. Since the layperson does not understand this and may happily buy the test, there is still that small, somewhat unethical market niche.

The incidence of pancreatic cancer in 50-year-olds is approximately 10 / 100,000. If this group is tested with 78% sensitivity and 92% specificity, 8 cancer cases will be found, and at the same time, approximately 8,000 false positives will be obtained. So, to find 8, unnecessary anxiety and the need for further examinations are caused for 8,000 patients.

Evidence would be needed that more targeted screening benefits life expectancy. This requires large, expensive studies, and we are very far from that.

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Yes, I completely agree with you! The company would therefore have to survive for several more years for that evidence regarding life expectancy to be demonstrated. I don’t think that will happen just by selling the test at cost when the significantly cheaper CA19-9 is already on the market (how many people even buy this at cost, I wonder).

Of course, it would help if some hospitals quickly adopted that test for their own use instead of CA19-9, but isn’t even that used only for monitoring at-risk groups?

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The test is initially targeted at risk groups. Pancreatic cancer took my father, so I would gladly go for that test even once a year.

There are enough people in risk groups in the world, and the company is only worth about 20 million euros so far.

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Approximately 1,000 new pancreatic cancer cases are diagnosed daily worldwide. Most of them too late.

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A couple of comments and thoughts. Unfortunately, I don’t have sources for everything here, but please bear with me

PanCreasure enables the detection of pancreatic cancer significantly earlier with a blood test; otherwise, this would make no sense, and the company could file for bankruptcy.

Regarding the market and investment target. I don’t recall the study or statistics, but a significant portion of health technology and medical startups end up in bankruptcy without commercializing any product. In Immunovia’s case, a critical point has been passed in that the product has been approved for the US market and has a clear market. This is not intended for mass testing, of course; much less goes much further. Here are some thoughts on the market, which I wrote about earlier:

Without a payment plan, the test costs the consumer customer 750 USD. Annually, 150,000 - 170,000 cancers are diagnosed in the USA and Europe. From a doctor treating a risk group, I found the following screenprint from a Swedish forum: Placera Forum So this is what customer demand in risk groups looks like. A blood test for early diagnosis - people are willing to pay for that.

Let’s continue the thought; the sales margin for the blood test must be extremely high to cover product development costs. If 750 USD sells even 100,000 units per year - which shouldn’t be an impossible feat considering the severity of the disease and the consequences of delayed diagnosis. 100,000 sold tests must already represent a sales margin many times the company’s current market value. And if tests are performed many times more than diagnoses, and when this is multiplied over several years, an optimist can say that the best returns for investors are found by digging for pearls among the trash, cigarette butts, and banana peels in the stock market’s dumpster.

What about the risk? A superior, competing product or something else that makes Pancreasure unnecessary, in which case the whole thing ends in bankruptcy.

In a nutshell: if the company achieves anything at all in the commercialization that has now begun, a multi-bagger scenario is likely. Failure leads to bankruptcy. I will not follow empty promises and wavering from one offering to another.

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In familial cases, the sensitivity is the same 78%, the specificity is a bit better 94%, so the math is still quite unforgiving.

If we consider that the prior probability of finding pancreatic cancer at a single point in time around age 50 is 10/100,000, and for someone with a family risk, it’s about 5 times higher, i.e., 50/100,000 = 0.0005 = 0.05%.

By using that test and getting a negative result, the probability is still 0.0012%.

Relatively, the risk decreased a lot, but absolutely, it was low and remains low.

The entire lifetime risk is, of course, higher than at a single point in time. So the test should be repeated annually. In doing so, one very likely exposes oneself to a false positive result

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Clark Kent got there first.

Why wouldn’t I, as someone in a risk group, rather take CA19-9, which is even more sensitive? Not to mention the burden caused by false positives (well, that doesn’t bother the test seller, of course).

For that $750 price, I would rather get a pancreatic MRI.

I’m just wondering who the target audience for the product is. How to motivate those in risk groups/just curious to pay $750 for the test? Considering the specificity, a hospital/public healthcare might be more interested for screening purposes, but as stated, there’s a long way to go for that.

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