NEW YORK – Grail said Tuesday that it has signed an agreement with Point32Health, the combined organization of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan, to conduct a two-phased pilot study of its Galleri multi-cancer early detection blood test.
Point32Health will be the first commercial health plan in the US to explore the test as a complement to recommended cancer screenings, Grail said.
When it launched Galleri last year, the firm initially offered it through Renton, Washington-based health system Providence. A subsequent partnership with Premier, a healthcare group purchasing organization, followed last month to implement a testing alert system for physicians in the Indianapolis-based Community Health Network.
In the first phase of its new pilot, Point32Health will provide the test for its own employees who meet certain eligibility criteria, including age and family history of cancer. The second phase will make the test available to medical providers serving Point32Health commercial members — a group of about 2.2 million individuals in the New England region.
The partners intend to collect real-world evidence to assess the impact of the test on healthcare resource utilization and patient-reported outcomes among this larger population.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
In prior clinical research, Galleri has demonstrated the ability to detect more than 50 types of cancer, with a false positive rate of less than 1 percent. When cancer is detected, the assay can also determine the origin of the cancer signal in a large proportion of cases.
"By working with Point32Health, a company known for collaborating with world-class hospitals and healthcare providers, we are making significant progress aligning with forward-looking companies to detect cancer early when treatments are more effective and there is the potential for a cure," Josh Ofman, Grail's president and chief medical officer, said in a statement.