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Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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FDA Issues First Approval for At-Home COVID-19 Test to LabCorp’s Pixel; Other Clinical Laboratory-Developed At-Home Test Kits May Soon Be Available to General Public

Though the potential is high for false positives and false negatives, some experts believe at-home COVID-19 testing still holds promise for slowing the spread of the coronavirus

Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp) is the first diagnostic test developer to receive approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market an at-home specimen collection kit for COVID-19. In an April 21 FDA news release, the federal agency announced it had “re-issued the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Laboratory Corporation of America COVID-19 RT-PCR Test to permit testing of samples self-collected by patients at home using LabCorp’s Pixel by LabCorp COVID-19 Test home collection kit.”

The kit includes a nasal swab for specimen collection and a shipping package for returning the sample to a designated medical laboratory. Pixel is designed to work with LabCorp’s COVID-19 RT-PCR test, a real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test that determines if an active SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is present. The Pixel specimen-collection kit can be purchased for $119 on LabCorp’s website.

Presently, the Pixel kit is only available to healthcare workers and first responders who are symptomatic or who believe they may have been exposed to the virus. However, in a news release LabCorp stated that it “intends to make COVID-19 self-collection kits available to consumers in the coming weeks.”

Though purchasers have to pay for the kit themselves, a notice on LabCorp’s website states that the company “will work with you to get your purchase reimbursed by your health plan,” and that LabCorp is “actively working on a more streamlined solution, so you don’t have to pay up front.” LabCorp created a COVID-19 microsite where customers can receive future updates on the Pixel at-home test kit.

Adam Schechter LabCorp and Donald Trump
In LabCorp’s news release, Adam Schechter (at podium), President and CEO, emphasized his company’s commitment to helping patients and healthcare providers fight the COVID-19 crisis through LabCorp’s “leading testing capabilities and deep scientific and research expertise,” adding, “Our at-home collection kits are designed to make it easier and safer to test healthcare workers and first responders during this important time.” (Photo copyright: Yahoo News/Chip Somodevilla.)

Though Finger-stick At-home Tests Prove Inaccurate, Optimism Remains

As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the globe, in vitro diagnostic (IVD) developers, clinical laboratory companies, and healthcare professionals have scrambled to find an accurate, cost effective way to definitively test individuals for the coronavirus.

Complicating matters is the fact that many people are asymptomatic carriers who show no symptoms of the illness, but who can infect others.

Earlier this year, the UK government was optimistic that an at-home serological antibodies test would enable its citizens to collect their own blood specimens via finger sticks, and that the test would provide a way for individuals to test themselves for the coronavirus.

According to CNBC, the United Kingdom (UK) ordered millions of antibody tests, but after disappointing results, returned the kits and requested a refund.

The New York Times (NYT) reported that the British government paid $20 million upfront for two million untried antibody test kits from two Chinese companies: AllTest Biotech in Hangzhou and Wondfo Biotech in Guangzhou. Then, UK government officials announced the tests would be available to citizens within weeks, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson publicly declared the tests would be “simple as a pregnancy test.”

Neither of those predictions would come to pass. In April, British researchers announced that none of the coronavirus tests they had tried were accurate enough to be of any value.

“Sadly, the tests we have looked at to date have not performed well,” said Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine, University of Oxford, Medical Sciences Division, in a blog post titled, “Trouble in Testing Land.”

“We see many false negatives … and we also see false positives,” he wrote, adding that the UK “is now uniquely positioned to evaluate and find the optimal test for this disease, but no country has found a kit that is up to standard.” He also noted that locating such a test should be possible, but that it may take another month or more to find.

The Chinese companies defended their tests. In the Chinese newspaper Global Times, Wondfo stated its tests are “intended only as a supplement for patients who had already tested positive for the virus,” and on its website, AllTest stated its tests should “only [be] used by professionals,” not by patients at home, the New York Times reported.

Will At-home COVID-19 Testing Ever Work?

At-home testing kits for COVID-19 may seem like a great solution to the testing dilemma, but they could also prove to be problematic. “This may not be as good as it sounds,” Edo Paz, MD, a New York Presbyterian-trained cardiologist, Clinical Director at Heartbeat Health, and Vice President Medical, at K Health, a digital health company located in New York City, told CNET.

“Collecting a proper sample from the nose or mouth takes training and shipping delays of the specimen back to the lab could impact the quality of the sample,” he said, adding, “There could be a high false negative rate, leading people who are actually infected to believe they are not, potentially contributing to the crisis.”

Clinical pathologists have a unique understanding of the challenges that must be overcome for capillary blood to be of any use for testing, and of the potential for mishandling of specimens inherent in at-home test kits.

Nevertheless, with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus continuing to infect people around the world, the number and variety of tests will likely increase, which could create an upsurge in business for clinical laboratories and present new challenges for performing COVID-19 tests.

—JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes First Test for Patient At-Home Sample Collection

LabCorp’s At-home COVID-19 Test Kit is the First to be Authorized by the FDA

LabCorp COVID-19 At-Home Test Kit Receives FDA Emergency Use Authorization

LabCorp COVID-19 RT-PCR Test EUA Summary

Pixel by LabCorp COVID-19 Test (At-Home Kit)

Trouble in Testing Land

U.K. Paid $20 Million for New Coronavirus Tests. They Didn’t Work

Hopes for At-home Finger-prick Coronavirus Test Dashed after Accuracy is Questioned

Can You use a Coronavirus Home Testing Kit? Not Yet, and Here’s Why

Antibody Tests Could be Key to Reopening the Country. Here’s How They Work.

Dozens of Coronavirus Antibody Tests on the Market Were Never Vetted by the FDA, Leading to Accuracy Concerns

Canadian Scientists and Medical Researchers Urge Health Canada to Regulate Laboratory-developed Tests

Lack of regulations and quality management jeopardizes the quality and safety of LDTs, claim experts in clinical laboratory medicine in a commentary to Canadian policymakers

Health Canada is the latest government healthcare organization under pressure to enact legislation that regulates laboratory-developed tests (LDTs). In a public commentary, several members of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto in Ontario, urged Canadian lawmakers to follow the European Union’s lead and find ways to monitor LDTs in Canada.

The IHPME members published their comments in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), a peer-reviewed journal owned by Joule Inc., a subsidiary of the Canadian Medical Association. In it, they claim “recent expansion of the molecular diagnostics industry has revealed weaknesses in Canada’s regulatory system for laboratory-developed tests, which are not subject to statutory regulations on medical devices.”

For pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals in both Canada and the United States, these recent actions show the concerns many experts have as they watch the explosive growth in the use of laboratory-developed tests in both countries. In many ways, the swift advances in molecular and genetic diagnostics is outrunning the ability of government regulators to keep pace with use of LDTs in clinical care settings.

In their commentary in CMAJ, the IHPME members also claim the review and evaluation of LDTs in Canada is inconsistent. Some LDTs they say, may endure stringent assessments and have endorsements by clinical guidelines or findings that are published in scientific journals. Other LDTs, however, may have no analysis at all.

In addition, the IHPME members point out that there is no national registry kept of LDTs. They theorize that a lack of proper regulation, controls, and quality management “has potentially jeopardized the delivery of quality, safe, timely, and appropriate care.”

The researchers calling on Health Canada to address these issues include:

  • Kelly Holloway, PhD, Research scientist at University of Toronto;
  • Fiona A. Miller, PhD, Professor of Health Policy and IHPME Chair in Health Management Strategies;
  • François Rousseau, PhD, Professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Medical Biochemistry and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Laval University, Quebec;
  • Alberto Gutierrez, PhD, Partner, NDA Partners LLC, former Director, Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH);
  • Stuart Hogarth, PhD, Lecturer in Sociology of Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
During an exclusive presentation offered by The Dark Report (Dark Daily’s sister publication) in 2015, Alberto Gutierrez, PhD (above), who at that time was Director, Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health at the FDA, said, “LDTs are an area that will be difficult to regulate. There is a broad set of tests. Some of the LDTs are very good. Some of them require a lot of expertise from the pathologists and some of them don’t. Regulating LDTs in a way that makes sense and that does not disrupt what’s going on [in clinical laboratories] is going to be difficult.” (Photo copyright: FDA.)

Canadian Scientists Call on Health Canada to Take the Lead on Regulating LDTs

In the US, the FDA has been making moves to regulate LDTs since 2010, with much opposition from clinical laboratories and In Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) manufacturers. The FDA describes LDTs as internally designed clinical laboratory tests that are developed, manufactured, and used within a single laboratory. They have not undergone government regulatory review, can be simple or complex, and can be utilized to detect a variety of analytes.

Health Canada is the name of a department that falls under the purview of the Minister of Health and is part of Canada’s Health Portfolio. It is responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health. Other agencies included in the Health Portfolio are:

According to the IHPME paper, however, Health Canada currently does not have a way to regulate LDTs, and no government agency in that country is responsible for the oversight of laboratory-developed tests. Only LDTs that are marketed as test kits are evaluated and reviewed by Health Canada. 

“The current laboratory regulatory system in Canada involves a mixture of public and private entities and operates with oversight from provincial governments, nongovernmental organizations, and professional societies,” the IHPME paper states, adding, “most provinces and territories rely on voluntary standards that are unevenly applied, with little auditing and systematic testing to ensure quality.”

The authors also note that the current lab regulations in Canada apply only to the operations of the medical laboratories themselves, encompassing such things as lab environments, personnel, accreditation, and quality control. They believe the loophole regarding LDTs needs to be addressed, and they urged Health Canada to “demonstrate leadership” by subjecting these tests to regulations that are currently applied to medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

Other Countries Regulate LDTs, though Not Without Controversy

In support of their call to action, IHPME researchers noted that Australia, the EU, and the US all have taken steps to regulate LDTs.

The Australian government began oversight of LDTs in 2010 by subjecting high-risk LDTs to external evaluation and then tracking them in a public registry.

An EU regulation, which was passed in 2017, will administer regulatory review of LDTs manufactured on an industrial scale, which targets commercial laboratories. The law exempts LDTs utilized within individual hospital laboratories and should be fully implemented by 2022.

Though on its radar since the 1990s, in 2010, the FDA officially announced its intent to regulate LDTs in the US. The agency released an initial draft approach for doing so starting in 2014, held a public workshop on the topic in 2015, and released a discussion paper in 2017. At this time, however, the FDA is not regulating LDTs, though the agency remains open to the possibility.

Dark Daily has reported extensively over the years on the development of LDTs and the controversy surrounding the FDA’s moves to regulate them.

According to the FDA website, problems with several high-risk LDTs have been identified, including:

  • Claims that are not adequately supported with evidence;
  • Lack of appropriate controls which may yield erroneous results; and
  • Falsification of data.

However, in “FDA Looks to Clamp Down on Laboratory-Developed Tests and Put an End to ‘Wild West of Medicine’: Might CLIA Problems at Theranos Support FDA’s Position?Dark Daily, May 4, 2016, Roger D. Klein, MD, JD, Chair of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) Public Relations Committee, and Medical Director, Molecular Oncology at Cleveland Clinic, called a report released by the FDA in 2015 “mostly a hodgepodge of outlier assays.”

The FDA’s report, titled, “The Public Health Evidence for FDA Oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests,” reviewed 20 case studies of LDTs for Lyme disease, ovarian cancer, whooping cough, fibromyalgia, prostate cancer, autism, breast cancer, melanoma, Vitamin D, and other conditions. The agency concluded that in many instances “patients have been demonstrably harmed or may have been harmed by tests that did not meet FDA requirements.”

Klein noted, however, that “The 20 tests described by FDA are mostly a hodgepodge of outlier assays including tests that were never offered, tests for which comparable FDA assays perform poorly, tests for poorly defined disorders with psychologic components, and use of an FDA-approved test off-label.” He continued, “That FDA could find only these dubious examples out of the many thousands of laboratory-developed procedures (LDPs) that benefit patients each day, calls into question the agency’s rationale for expanding its regulatory scope to include LDPs.”

Perhaps this is why the FDA has yet to implement regulations for LDTs. The controversy continues.

Whether Health Canada will accept the advice of the IHPME scientists and take steps to regulate laboratory-developed tests in Canada remains to be seen. As more LDTs are created and manufactured, however, it is probable that governments will continue to evaluate the administration and oversight of laboratory-developed tests.

In both Canada and the United States, pathologists, clinical laboratory managers, and executives at in vitro diagnostic manufacturers can expect an ongoing tug-of-war between government regulators and the lab industry over the most appropriate ways to regulate LDTs.

—JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Health Canada Needs to Act on Laboratory-developed Diagnostics

Laboratory Developed Tests

The Public Health Evidence for FDA Oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests: 20 Case Studies

Framework for Regulatory Oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs)

FDA Discussion Paper on Laboratory Developed Tests

FDA Announces Intention to Regulate LDTs as Devices

FDA Official Makes Case in Favor of LDT Guidance

Regulation of Laboratory Developed Tests by FDA: Time for the Agency to Cease and Desist Until Congress Enacts Legislation

Johns Hopkins University Study Finds Laboratory-Developed Liquid Biopsy Tests Can Give Different Results; Call for ‘Improved Certification’ of Medical Laboratories That Develop These LDTs

FDA Looks to Clamp Down on Laboratory-Developed Tests and Put an End to ‘Wild West of Medicine’: Might CLIA Problems at Theranos Support FDA’s Position?

Johns Hopkins University Study Finds Laboratory-Developed Liquid Biopsy Tests Can Give Different Results; Call for ‘Improved Certification’ of Medical Laboratories That Develop These LDTs

Liquid biopsy tests hold much promise. But inconsistencies in their findings provoke scrutiny and calls from researchers for further development before they can be considered reliable enough for diagnostic use

Many commercial developers of liquid biopsy tests tout the accuracy and benefits of their diagnostic technology. However, there are an equal number of medical laboratory experts who believe that this technology is not yet reliable enough for clinical use. Critics also point out that these tests are being offered as Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs), which are internally developed and validated and have not undergone regulatory review.

Dark Daily has published several e-briefings on researchers who have sent the same patient samples to different genetic testing labs and received back materially different test results. Now, a new study by Johns Hopkins University concludes that liquid biopsy technology “must improve” before it should be relied upon for diagnostic and treatment decision making.

‘Certification for Medical Laboratories Must Improve’

Liquid Biopsy is the term for drawing whole blood and looking for cancer/tumor cells circulating in the blood stream. This is one factor in the imprecision of a liquid biopsy. Did the blood sample drawn actually have tumor cells? After all, only a limited number of tumor cells, if present, are in circulation.

Researchers at The James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine know this and recently compared results of two liquid biopsy tests to determine which one would be more beneficial for patients. They published their findings in the December issue of JAMA Oncology.

Gonzalo Torga, MD (above left), and Kenneth J. Pienta, MD (above right), are the two Johns Hopkins Medicine doctors who conducted the recent study into the efficacy of liquid biopsy laboratory developed tests (LDTs) offered by different medical laboratory companies. They published their findings in JAMA Oncology. (Photos copyright: Johns Hopkins.)

To perform the study, researchers collected blood samples from 40 patients with metastatic prostate cancer and sent the same patient samples to two different Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) licensed College of American Pathologists (CAP) accredited laboratories. The labs then performed DNA next-generation sequencing on the samples following the directions of the two liquid biopsy manufacturers.

In reporting the DNA findings and results from the two medical laboratory companies, researchers discovered that the results completely matched in only three of the 40 patients! The Johns Hopkins researchers are concerned that patients could be prescribed certain cancer treatments based on which lab company’s liquid biopsy test their physician orders, instead of an accurate identification of the unique mutations in their tumors.

“Liquid biopsy is a promising technology, with an exceptional potential to impact our ability to treat patients, but it is a new technology that may need more time and experience to improve,” Gonzalo Torga, MD, Postdoctoral Fellow and Instructor at Johns Hopkins, and the lead author of the study, told Forbes. “We can’t tell from these studies which laboratory’s panel is better, but we can say that certification for these laboratories must improve.”

Unlocking New View of Tumors

Two commercial tests were used for the study:

Guardant360 from Guardant Health, Inc., uses digital sequencing to analyze genomic data points at the single molecular level. It examines 73 genes, including all National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) listed genes. The test searches for DNA fragments among billions of cells and digitally tags each fragment. This process unlocks a view of tumors that is not seen with tissue biopsies, which helps doctors prescribe the best treatment options for a particular patient.

“As a simple blood test, it provides physicians with a streamlined, cost-effective method to identify genomic alterations that can comprehensively influence a patient’s therapy response,” Helmy Eltoukhy, PhD, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Guardant Health, told MDBR.

“The only way of keeping ahead of those diseases and tracking those mutations has been through surgery, through doing a tissue biopsy and physically cutting a piece of the tumor out and sequencing it,” Eltoukhy noted in an interview with Xconomy. “What we’re able to do is essentially get the same, or sometimes better performance to tissue biopsy, but through two teaspoons of blood.”

According to the Guardant Health website, it takes just 14 days for a full report from Guardant360 to reach the ordering physician. In addition, the blood test provides samples with an adequate level of cell-free DNA to test 99.8% of the time and reduces errors and false positives found in standard sequencing methods by 1,000 times. It is common for samples used for tissue sequencing to have insufficient DNA for testing 20% to 40% of the time.

“We believe that conquering cancer is at its core a big data problem, and researchers have been data-starved,” explained Eltoukhy in VentureBeat. “Our launch of the world’s first commercial comprehensive liquid biopsy sparked a boom in cancer data acquisition. Every physician who orders one of our tests, and every patient whose tumor DNA we sequence, adds to this larger mission by improving our understanding of this complex disease.”

PlasmaSELECT-R64, manufactured by Personal Genome Diagnostics (PGDx), evaluates a targeted panel of 64 genes that have biological and functional relevance in making treatment decisions. PGDx announced the expanded version of its PlasmaSELECT assay in March of 2017.

“We are proud to launch the revolutionary PlasmaSELECT 64 expanded assay just six months after we introduced the most accurate, clinically actionable liquid biopsy tumor profiling assay to the market,” said Doug Ward, Chief Executive Officer at PGDx, in a press release. “This update is the first liquid biopsy assay that includes MSI (microsatellite instability) testing as a biomarker for high tumor mutational load, thereby providing cancer patients and their oncologists with information on whether they might be candidates for immuno-oncology therapies. The ability to generate DNA tumor profiling non-invasively using blood or plasma offers many advantages and makes genomic testing more accessible and usable.”

Regulations of LDTs Could be Needed to Improve Liquid Biopsy Tests

There are pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals who believe the technology behind liquid biopsies is not yet reliable enough for clinical use. The tests are being offered as LDTs, which are internally developed and validated, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows LDTs to be sold without regulatory reviews at this time. However, there are discussions regarding if and how to regulate LDTs, the outcome of which could impact how clinical laboratories are allowed to market the LDTs they develop.

Clearly, liquid biopsies are still in their relatively early stages of development. More testing and evaluation is needed to determine their efficacy. However, their potential to revolutionize cancer detection and care is obvious and a strong motivator for LTD developers, which means there will be future developments worth noting.

—JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Oncologists, Beware: Expensive Liquid Biopsy Tests Produce Conflicting Results

One Patient, Two Cancer DNA Tests, Two Different Results

Liquid Biopsy Results Differed Substantially Between Two Providers

Cancer Screening Firm Guardant Health Raises $360 Million to Sequence Tumor DNA of 1 Million Patients

Guardant Health Launches Guardant360 Blood Test in US

With $100M, Guardant Health to Expand Reach of Blood Test for Cancer

Personal Genome Diagnostics’ Expanded PlasmaSELECT 64 Is First Liquid Biopsy Pan-Cancer Profiling Panel to Include MSI Analyses for Immuno-Oncology

‘Liquid Biopsy’ Picks up Cancer Biomarkers in Blood, Study Finds

FDA Reveals New Approach to Laboratory Developed Tests

Using Extracellular Vesicles, Researchers Highlight Viability of Liquid Biopsies for Cancer Biomarker Detection in Clinical Laboratories

FDA Looks to Clamp Down on Laboratory-Developed Tests and Put an End to ‘Wild West of Medicine’: Might CLIA Problems at Theranos Support FDA’s Position?

The Wall Street Journal examines the FDA’s position on LDTs and looks at the pros and cons of LDT regulation by the federal agency

National news coverage over the deficiencies uncovered by Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) inspections of the clinical laboratory operated by Theranos in Newark, Calif., may have an interesting consequence that affects all medical laboratories and pathology groups.

Over the past 30 months, Theranos has regularly asserted that its laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) were under review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For example, in an interview published in the December 14, 2014, issue of The New Yorker, Theranos Founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes stated, “We believe that to realize our vision we must operate at the highest levels of excellence… And the FDA’s stamp of approval is seen as an indicator of the quality of a product.”

Thus, it would be ironic if the problems in the quality of clinical laboratory tests uncovered by federal CLIA inspectors at the Theranos lab facility in Newark was used by the FDA to justify their intent to regulate LDTs. The FDA has already released a report to the public that identified instances where laboratories running LDTs were alleged to have reported inaccurate lab test results to patients and their physicians. (more…)

Nanotechnology-Based Medical Laboratory Test Chip Developed at Stanford University Detects Type-1 Diabetes in Minutes and Can Be Used in Doctors’ Offices

Developers seeking FDA Approval for microchip-based nanotechnology type-1 diabetes test, which has been performed on people with accurate results

New nanotechnology has made it possible for a team at Stanford University School of Medicine to develop a medical laboratory test for type-1 diabetes that can be performed in a physician’s office and does not require a specimen collected by venipuncture.

This microchip requires just minutes to diagnose type-1 diabetes in near-patient settings, according to a Stanford University news release. (more…)

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