Friday, August 27, 2010

Melanoma

I invested in shares of MELA last year on its promising MelaFind technology to detect melanomas with 98% accuracy, way above the expected 60 - 70% accuracy by expert dermatologists. I took profits in MELA despite my continued optimism for MelaFind's eventual approval. The commercialization roll out plan wasn't clear to me, and in fact, the PDUFA date was delayed until November 18, 2010. MELA shares may rise in anticipation of FDA approval.

In a related peer-reviewed article, a surprising trend for melanoma was revealed.

http://www.onenewspage.com/news/Health/20100827/14464544/Health-and-melanoma-cancer-using-MelaFind.htm

According to the New England Journal of Medicine published Wednesday August 25th 2010, 68,000 are diagnosed with melanoma each year. While it was believed that whites with the fairest skin and blue eyes were most at risk the number are 4.5% of whites, 8% of Latinos, and 15% of African Americans. Now the good news is that an experimental tool named MelaFind is like the same outer space recognition tool that is used in outer space. Dermatologists claim that while they find melanomas two thirds of the time MelaFind finds melanomas 98% of the time, and compares it to other melanomas both...

See disclaimers in the side bar.

Disclosure: no position in MELA. A family member still has a position in MELA.
Posted by Gaucho Greg at August 27, 2010
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3 comments:

  1. Catherine PooleAugust 28, 2010 at 4:38 PM

    The issue with Melafind is how practical will it be? Can the average doctor afford to have it in his/her office? Will it prevent biopsies? No. A biopsy will still be needed to verify the lesion to be melanoma.

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  2. Gaucho Greg August 28, 2010 at 5:11 PM

    Catherine, it's actually very practical, and is non-invasive. The issue is cost, as I believe it's closer to $30K, and if they have to price it at $5K, that will hurt cash flow--hence my confusion on their business model. The revenue from the use of the cards would be split by the practitioner and MELA. And yes, it will reduce the incidences of painful and unnecessary biopsies due to the higher accuracy. Also, the accuracy will improve as they add to their database. In fact, the dermatologist who developed the ABCDE scale endorses it and acknowledges the higher accuracy rates for both false positives and false negatives. Many dermatologists have made a negative prognosis only to find out later it was indeed melanoma. MelaFind is another tool to reduce those incidences dramatically.

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  3. Gaucho Greg August 28, 2010 at 5:53 PM

    BTW, if your concern is that even with 98% accuracy, that 2% leaves a small portion of the patient population that will need a biopsy, you have a point. But I guess what I'm saying is that right now, up to 40% of patients are sent home with a false clean bill of health when in fact they MAY have melanoma, and perhaps did not receive a biopsy they should have received.

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