Esophageal cancer is one of the most deadly cancers — so why doesn’t the healthcare industry have better tools to prevent the disease?
Lucid Diagnostics is on a mission to solve that problem. The company — which was launched in 2018 as a subsidiary of medtech company PAVmed — has developed a quick, office-based test that can detect precancer in people with heartburn at risk of developing esophageal cancer.
By focusing on preventing esophageal cancer, Lucid is fulfilling an unmet need, pointed out CEO Lishan Aklog. When it comes to early detection programs, this cancer type has seen significantly less activity than other cancers, such as breast, lung, colon and cervical, he said.
Lucid’s test for esophageal precancer, called EsoCheck, is primarily meant for patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), commonly known as heartburn or acid reflux. People with GERD are considered to be at high risk for developing esophageal precancer and cancer, Aklog noted.
“The key to preventing 16,000 [annual] cancer deaths is to not detect it at an early stage. That’s not very effective because Stage 1 esophageal cancer has an almost 50% mortality rate,” he explained. “In order to actually have an impact and prevent these deaths, you have to pick it up at the precancer stage.”
If a physician identifies that their patient has early precancer, they usually just monitor the patient with an endoscopy every three years, Aklog said. If a physician determines that their patient has late precancer, the care team usually then performs an endoscopic ablation, a procedure that destroys the abnormal precancer cells before they can progress to cancer, he added.
Before Lucid’s test, the only way for physicians to identify esophageal precancer was via endoscopy, Aklog stated.
Endoscopies are not convenient, though, he noted — explaining that they are invasive, require an intravenous anesthetic and usually necessitate time-consuming preparation and recovery.
“Endoscopy has failed as a screening methodology. The missing link in all of this — so that we could actually prevent these tragic deaths — was a simple, effective, outpatient office-based test that can detect a precancerous condition and put people on surveillance and a treatment program to prevent cancer. And that’s what we have,” Aklog remarked.
The EsoCheck device — which received FDA clearance in 2019 — is the size of a common vitamin pill, and it is attached to a thin catheter. The device collects cells from a patient’s esophagus when swallowed, which are then analyzed for genetic markers associated with esophageal precancer and cancer.
The whole process of collecting the sample takes “a minute or two,” Aklog declared.
There are at least 30 million patients each year who should be tested for esophageal precancer but are not, he said. These are people who are over age 50 and have two risk factors — which include things like obesity, smoking, heavy alcohol consumption and chronic GERD.
The complexity of endoscopies means that many physicians fail to recommend them and many patients opt not to go through with them — but EsoCheck has the potential to solve this issue with its convenience, Aklog said.
He noted that Lucid is the only company selling a commercial technology that can perform noninvasive biomarker testing for esophageal precancer.
Aklog also said that he is optimistic Lucid’s product will be approved for coverage by Medicare and commercial insurers “quite shortly.”
Photo: Lucid Diagnostics
