Wouldn’t it be great if a government health task force recommended that people use the kind of test you create every year? Something like that just happened to Exact Sciences, maker of the Cologuard home-based colorectal cancer screening test. It happened when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) changed its guidelines by recommending that screening for colon and rectal cancer start at age 45, rather than 50. In addition to saving thousands of lives by promoting earlier colorectal cancer detection, the USPSTF announcement is very good news for molecular screening test companies, especially but not exclusively Exact Sciences. Here is a breakdown of the new USPSTF recommendations and their potential impact on screening patterns and the molecular testing market. The Diagnostic Challenge Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death among adults in the U.S., with more than 52,000 people projected to die from the disease in 2021. Most colorectal cancer cases are diagnosed in people ages 65 to 74. Only 10.5 percent of new cases occur in those below age 50. However, the case incident rate among this group has steadily increased—at a nearly 15 percent clip between 2000 and 2016. Unfortunately, there has been no […]