Call Thursday's cancer test results mixed.
Thursday was the day set for shareholders to approve the merger of special-purpose acquisition company Perceptive Capital Solutions with cancer screening firm Freenome. The resulting public company will compete with Guardant Health, Grail, and Natera in a market for cancer-detecting blood tests that they hope will eventually be worth more than $30 billion a year.
But the affianced firms postponed the vote when Freenome got the results of an 1,800-patient trial of its next generation blood test for colorectal cancer. The study shows Freenome's updated SimpleScreen CRC test was somewhat less sensitive to cancers, overall, than Guardant's Shield test, but the Freenome test was more sensitive to precancerous growths.
Shares of the Perceptive Capital SPAC fell 4% Thursday, to $10.93. The companies reset their merger vote for 10 a.m. July 15.
All these tests use advanced genomic sequencing systems to analyze bits of DNA that tumor cells shed into the bloodstream, allowing cancers to be detected even before symptoms appear.
The Guardant colorectal cancer test got marketing approval last year from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and sales this year could exceed $190 million. Freenome and Grail await FDA decisions on their applications. Natera hopes to submit an application this year.
None of the colorectal blood screens have yet matched the detection ability of colonoscopies, or of the Cologuard stool sample swab from the Abbott Laboratories unit Exact Sciences. Fewer than 40% of those who should get colonoscopies do so. But many people find a blood test more convenient, so their availability complements the methods of screening for what is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths.
A lead investigator on Freenome's study said its blood test's improved sensitivity to precancerous growths can help catch cancer early. "[It] gets us closer to matching the performance of certain stool-based CRC screening tests, with potentially higher adherence," said Aasma Shaukat, a professor of medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in Freenome's press release.
Abbott Laboratories will market Freenome's tests upon FDA approval.
Write to Bill Alpert at william.alpert@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 09, 2026 16:24 ET (20:24 GMT)
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