15 Jun Outlook Improves For Exact Sciences After Task Force Tweaks Ratings
Xconomy Wisconsin — The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force on Wednesday announced changes to how it classifies colorectal cancer screening methods, a shift that could have implications for Madison, WI-based Exact Sciences (NASDAQ: EXAS) and its flagship product, a stool-based DNA test for colorectal cancer.
In October, the task force released draft guidelines that proposed identifying Exact’s test, known as Cologuard, as an “alternative” screening method, leaving it out of a group of “recommended” tests. Shares in Exact fell more than 40 percent the day after the draft guidelines were made public.
But in a statement published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the task force said it removed the terms “recommended” and “alternative” from its final 2016 colorectal cancer screening recommendation in order to “better communicate the primary message of importance.”
According to the statement, “There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to colorectal cancer screening.” However, “There is convincing evidence that screening for colorectal cancer provides substantial benefit for adults aged 50 to 75 years, and a sizable proportion of the eligible U.S. population is not taking advantage.”
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