Scott Hutton: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think we’re approaching it as if it won’t negate it. I think for us, getting into guidelines, whether that’s NCCN, ACCP, Fleischner that really would be a great tailwind for us. As we’ve stated before, ACCP, which is the chest guidelines, would be the most appropriate for us. This is where developing and presenting the best data possible. And as you get that out there, enabling and empowering physicians to make the right decisions. We’ve highlighted historically that chest or ACCP has been delayed. They’re behind. So, they’ve made very few actual updates for lung nodule management and lung cancer detection and diagnosis in the last couple of years. So, if we can agree that they’re behind, it’s really a matter of when do they catch up and then how broadly do they go in updating those guidelines.
NCCN is going to be slightly more on the treatment guidance front, which could benefit us on our IQ Lung. So, we’re going to continue to fuel that by funding studies, producing and publishing the best and highest quality data possible, and working with those private payers to make certain that if they have questions, we’re answering those questions with data.
Kyle Mikson: Okay, that was great, Scott. There’s one more before I hop off about the portfolio. So, I think the pipeline tests were not mentioned possibly at all in the remarks. Maybe just like, either update us on these tests like at the MRD tests or peer or anything like that. And then maybe like we should expect any news or updates this year or next year possibly from those assets.
Scott Hutton: Yeah, thanks, Kyle. Yeah, just as a reminder for everybody, we have three products in our pipeline. We have a primary immune response test where we’re able to identify those patients that will respond favorably to an immunotherapy regimen. We also have risk of recurrence, which is a pre-surgical resection blood-based test where we can identify those patients with the highest likelihood of recurrence. And then MRD would be our post-surgical resection blood-based test where we can identify those patients with minimal residual disease who are also likely to recur. We believe we’ll be the first company to have both a pre-surgical and post-surgical blood draw that can help identify those patients with the highest likelihood of recurrence.
And that those two tests would cover both kind of a multi-omic approach, both proteomic and genomic. Given our prioritization of kind of progressing towards profitability, Kyle, we’ve slowed commercialization of those. So we’re not planning on launching any of those three tests here in 2024. And I think everybody understands when you first launch a test and you have to build kind of that experience and that data, oftentimes those are no-pay tests. And so for us, ensuring that we’ve got a path to reimbursement for those will help guide us in our timeline of commercialization. We’ll continue to provide updates as we progress. I wouldn’t anticipate hearing much on the risk of recurrence or primary immune response front. We’ve already discovered, developed, and validated those.
Those are still being offered for biopharmaceutical partners in a research use only basis. The MRD project, though, I fully expect we’ll be providing updates here in the coming weeks and months as we continue to progress and collaborate with Memorial Sloan Kettering. They’ve been a tremendous partner. And I think what you’ll find is working together collaboratively. We believe that this is an engine that will enable us to fuel future growth and potentially add additional products in addition to the MRD product.
Kyle Mikson: Okay. Have these pipeline tests been driving some of the biopharma revenue recently or could that be upside going forward?
Scott Hutton: It definitely is upside. Yeah, we offer them, Kyle. It really is dependent upon the different biopharmaceutical companies, their studies, the critical questions they’re trying to answer that they think we can help them answer. It was not, or those two were not the big drivers in the fourth quarter. We saw a tremendous amount of continued interest in our, really, our treatment guidance portfolio. So, everything within IQ Lung, the GeneStrat ddPCR, the GeneStrat NGS, and the VeriStrat test. Those were the big drivers of biopharma interest. And I think it’s fair to say that early in 2024, it continues to be that way. A lot of interest. We’re making a lot of progress on numerous fronts with a handful of major biopharmaceutical companies.
Kyle Mikson: Yeah, thanks, Scott. Thanks, Robin. Appreciate it.
Scott Hutton: Yeah, thank you, Kyle.
Operator: Our next question will come from the line of Tejas Savant with Morgan Stanley.
Madison Pasterchick: Hi, team. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions, Madison, on for Tejas. I was just wondering to start off, with lung diagnostics volume growing at about 65% in 2023, driven primarily by Nodify Lung testing. So, I’m wondering how sustainable you think that growth is as we start to see tougher comps year-over-year in 2024?
Scott Hutton: Yeah. Hi, Madison. Good morning. Great question. You know, for us, it’s really a factor of the number of sales professionals we have, the opportunity within the territories we place them, and in some cases, whether that territory and sales consultant has an associate with them. You know, with six straight quarters of greater than 50% growth, that’s really the bar that we’ve established and the goal that we’ve challenged the team to kind of hit and exceed that growth performance. We stated that we hired 10 additional sales professionals at the end of 2023. The nice thing is, is based upon our track record, we know that within about three months, they’re going to be paying for themselves and contributing. And so, we did that with that goal in mind.
