In order to provide convenient access to 20/20's proprietary multi-cancer screening blood test, OneTest, we have begun piloting a model where the test is made available at participating Urgent / Primary Care Centers throughout the U.S. Interested consumers who learn about the product from general advertising can schedule an appointment or visit these walk-in clinics, usually located in shopping centers, on evenings or weekends, engage with informed healthcare practitioners, and provide a blood specimens which are sent to 20/20's clinical laboratory for processing.

As of this writing, the following retail clinics have signed contracts to offer OneTest for at least an initial 3 month pilot:

We expect additional retail clinics to sign on in Q1 '19 and even more later in the year as the model is demonstrated to be successful during these initial pilots. We have already tested a handful of samples from the opening few days of our Rockville site.

Beginning in January, 2019, at least two important hospitals in Taiwan are planned to be the first to gain remote access to our OneTest A.I. powered cloud solution. Beitou Health Management Hospital in Taipei and Jen-Ai Hospital in Taichung, like thousands of clinics in East Asia, provide tumor marker testing as part of routine health check-ups. Following product demonstrations by 20/20's Taiwan team, both hospitals see the value in our algorithms and will be evaluating our machine learning solutions using real-world clinical cases over several months. This is expected to be followed by access license agreements with many more hospitals, clinics and health check centers throughout Taiwan, China, Japan, and other East Asian countries in 2019. 

On December 18, 2018 U.S. Patent No. 10,156,575 titled "Methods and Algorithms for Aiding in the Detection of Cancer" issued. A copy of the patent, assigned to 20/20, may be downloaded here. The patent broadly covers lung cancer tests that measure tumor antigens with one or more autoantibody biomarkers to identify individuals at increased risk for lung cancer that should receive follow-up CT scans.

This is the second issued patent covering 20/20's lung cancer tests which are expected to become incorporated into OneTest early in 2019. Additional patents covering our multi-cancer tests are pending.

An October 1, 2018 report published in Disease Markers, described a study involving over 2,000 individuals in China to reproduce the results of 20/20's lung cancer test as published by our company's scientists (Doseeva et al.) in 2015. The Chinese report, which may be viewed here, concluded that the protein biomarkers (CEA, CA-125, CY211) and analytical method used in our first generation PAULAs test resulted in close to "excellent diagnostic efficacy" (AUC 0.866 with 0.9 being "excellent"). The study authors endorse this testing approach for lung cancer screening of healthy populations.

Since our 2015 publication, we have improved PAULAs test with a machine learning algorithm that incorporates patient information such as age, gender, and smoking history. We plan to incorporate PAULAs 2.0 into OneTest while also continuing to offer it as a stand alone test.

Shareholders and others who reside in the Bay area or who will be in San Francisco during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference are invited to join us for an informational luncheon on Thursday January, 10 at 12:30 p.m. Complimentary OneTest vouchers will be made available to all who attend this meeting.

The luncheon will be at the offices of Crowell & Moring, 275 Battery St, Ste 2300, San Francisco. To attend, please RSVP to Robyn@2020gene.com