On the threshold of commercial launch

Originating from research at Lund University, diagnostic company Immunovia is now extremely close to market launch and the first order for its early pancreatic cancer detection test. “We are tremendously excited about having the very first blood test ordered for analysis in the laboratory. Behind that order is a real, concerned patient, who needs to get an accurate early detection of a very serious disease,” says Patrik Dahlen, CEO of Immunovia since November last year. “We are tremendously excited about having the very first blood test ordered for analysis in the laboratory. Behind that order is a real, concerned patient, who needs to get an accurate early detection of a very serious disease.” Although new in his role as CEO, Dahlen is not unfamiliar with the company’s journey. A few years ago he was on the Board of Immunovia. “It is a privilege to lead the company through its market launch, truly a milestone that just happens once in a company’s history.” In his role he brings over 30 years of experience from global diagnostics companies, which should come in handy for Immunovia. The company is focused on developing and commercializing highly accurate blood tests to detect cancers and autoimmune diseases and just recently, it announced its last development milestone – making them ready for the US market. Highly specific biomarker signatures But let’s start from the beginning. Researchers at the Department of Immunotechnology at Lund University and at CREATE Health, a Strategic Center for Translational Cancer Research in Lund, Sweden, started to develop a technology platform, IMMray. The antibody-based platform used recognized immunoproteomics research expertise to measure the immune system’s response to diseases by detecting extremely small changes in the amount of protein in the blood. The technology is based on bioinformatics, finding the most clinically relevant changes that appear in the blood, and combining this knowledge into a biomarker signature that is highly specific to the particular disease. Their findings meant that a simple blood test was enough to detect a disease long before the patients developed any symptoms. ”Since early detection of cancer is the only way to increase survival rates, this represents a huge market. The company was founded in 2007, when it was clear that these discoveries and patents were able to be commercialized,” says Dahlen.     During the following years, the antibody technology