Natera, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRA) shares faltered Wednesday, on word it was awarded a nationwide contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Precision Oncology Program, to provide minimal residual disease (MRD) and monitoring services with the company's personalized and tumor-informed MRD test, Signatera™.
The VA is the largest integrated health system in the country, providing care to over 450,000 veterans living with cancer. Through this contract the Signatera™ test will be made available for serial use, to help detect residual disease and inform difficult treatment decisions. Signatera™ is covered by Medicare for use in colorectal cancer, muscle invasive bladder cancer, and pan-cancer immunotherapy monitoring, and has been validated across multiple cancer types to detect recurrence earlier than standard diagnostic tools and to help assess treatment response in conjunction with imaging.
Data supporting the clinical validity and utility of Signatera™ has been published in 35 peer-reviewed publications.
"We are proud to partner with the VA to make Signatera accessible to our nation's veterans," said Natera senior official Solomon Moshkevich. "We look forward to working with the VA and other integrated health systems around the country to integrate Signatera into standard clinical practice, with the goal of improving clinical outcomes and reducing the costs associated with unnecessary treatment."
Signatera is a custom-built circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) test for treatment monitoring and molecular residual disease (MRD) assessment in patients previously diagnosed with cancer.
NTRA shares listed lower by $1.25, or 2.7%, to $45.42.
