Immunovia announces a collaboration with the researchers at Lund University Diabetes Centre (LUDC) to validate the company´s biomarker signature in high risk group of newly-onset type 2 diabetics (NoD) patients over the age of 50.

The risk of these patients to develop pancreatic cancer is over 8 times greater than that of the general population.

The collaboration is designed as a retrospective validation study, in which LUDC, a consortium of research groups at Lund University, will deliver blood samples from NoD patients who subsequently developed pancreatic cancer to be analysed by IMMray PanCan-d test with the main goal of detecting pancreatic cancer at the early stages when the tumor is still resectable.

“Pancreatic cancer has one of lowest survival rates of any major cancer type and a mortality exceeding breast cancer. All the research points to that the key to improve prognosis lies in early detection in the high risk groups such as newly-onset diabetics. As we are already in prospective validation of the test in the hereditary risk group (see press release for more info from Dec. 20, 2016) this retrospective study plays a crucial role for IMMrayTM PanCan-d in detecting pancreatic cancer in newly onset diabetic patients. Working together with Lund University Diabetes Centre in this study, we aim to take yet another important step towards making early detection of pancreatic cancer accessible for clinicians and patients,” commented Mats Grahn, CEO, Immunovia

“Already back in 2015 we found an increased risk of both liver and pancreatic cancers in type 2 diabetic patients in a Swedish Cancer registry. We now look forward to taking our research further into endogenous and exogenous factors that contribute to these associations between diabetes and cancer through this collaboration with Immunovia,” said Prof. Leif Groop, LUDC.