Razor Genomics has developed a test enables the identification of lung cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and allows them to be treated at a time when their cancer can still be responsive to adjuvant chemotherapy.

OncoCyte’s newly appointed CEO Ronald Andrews is making good on a promise for more transparency in the company. Investors and analysts witnessed this new level of transparency first hand during a detailed conference call the Alameda, CA-based company held concerning its plan for acquiring Razor Genomics.

“One thing that is important to note today is that we [made a commitment] during our call in August … that we wanted to become more transparent about the strategy of the company and also the key details as to how we were going to pursue that strategy,” Andrews said. “This is the first of such calls where we can spend some time explaining the strategy but then walk you through the news of the day.”

Andrews assumed the OncoCyte CEO role in July, succeeding William Annett.

Brisbane, CA-based Razor Genomics has a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments-certified treatment stratification test, that has been rigorously validated to identify early-stage lung cancer patients who are at high-risk vs. low-risk of death within five years following surgical resection. The Razor test enables the identification of lung cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and allows them to be treated at a time when their cancer can still be responsive to adjuvant chemotherapy.

In a published clinical utility study of the Razor test, the five-year disease-free survival rate was 92% for individuals identified as high risk by the assay and treated with chemotherapy, compared to 49% in untreated high-risk patients.

Similarly, individuals identified as low-risk by the Razor test had a 5-year disease-free survival of 94% without the use of chemotherapy. In this study, the test demonstrated higher accuracy at discriminating between high and low-risk patients than in current National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline criteria for risk assessment.

In another published survey of physicians who ordered the test, about one in three physicians changed their treatment decision based on the results of the Razor test.Company executives said the addition of the Razor treatment stratification test for patients diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer is a perfect downstream complement to the DetermaVu liquid biopsy test.

Recently,  the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Molecular Diagnostic Services Program recommended coverage for the Razor test. Executives said this is a significant inflection point for OncoCyte and accelerates the path to becoming a commercial-stage company.

“Genomic Health’s OncoType DX has the exact same endpoint in breast cancer that our Razor test has in lung cancer,” Andrews said. “And today [OncoType Dx] is reimbursed around $3,500 and has been since it got its first coverage decision about 10 years ago.”A little more than a month ago, Exact Sciences agreed to acquire Genomic Health in a transaction valued at $2.8 billion.