On March 27, 2020 Castle Biosciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSTL), a skin and eye cancer diagnostics company providing personalized genomic information to improve cancer treatment decisions, reported to its website results from a survey performed by the Collaborative Ocular Oncology Group (COOG) for the purpose of providing a current practices survey for clinicians regarding management of patients diagnosed with uveal melanoma and other ocular tumors during the COVID-19 pandemic (Press release, Castle Biosciences, MAR 27, 2020, View Source [SID1234555952]).

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The Collaborative Ocular Oncology Group (COOG) represents most major ocular oncology centers in North America who manage patients with uveal melanoma and other ocular tumors. Twenty-three of twenty-five COOG members were able to complete the survey.

The COOG conducted an on-line survey study between March 25-26, 2020, in order to survey current management practices for patients with a range of eye tumors, including uveal melanoma, high risk choroidal nevus, retinoblastoma, intraocular metastasis, vitreoretinal lymphoma, benign intraocular tumors, conjunctival melanoma, conjunctival squamous cell carcinoma/ocular surface squamous neoplasia (OSSN), and conjunctival lymphoma.

"Telemedicine is of limited value in patients with active intraocular cancers, due to the need for specialized ophthalmic imaging, whereas it may be of more benefit in patients with treated inactive tumors, and those with ocular surface conjunctival tumors, in which the patient can take photos of the eye with their smartphone," said J. William Harbour, M.D., the Mark J. Daily Endowed Professor of Ophthalmology, Vice Chairman for Translational Research, and Director of Ocular Oncology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Associate Director for Basic Research at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, and chair of the COOG. "Given these challenges, we conducted a survey of COOG investigators across North America to obtain a snapshot of current practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, most ocular oncology experts continue to promptly see new patients with eye cancers, such as uveal melanoma, retinoblastoma, intraocular metastasis and vitreoretinal lymphoma. In contrast, many experts would delay by at least a few weeks the return of established eye cancer patients who have been treated and are stable, and those with benign or low-grade tumors."

Summary results are attached, and detailed results are available on the Castle Biosciences DecisionDx-UM page: View Source The attached results were prepared by the COOG, and Castle Biosciences makes no representation or warranty as to their accuracy or completeness.

About DecisionDx-UM

DecisionDx-UM is a 15-gene expression profiling (GEP) test that uses an individual patient’s tumor biology to predict individual risk of metastasis. DecisionDx-UM is considered to be standard of care in the management of uveal melanoma in the majority of ocular oncology practices in the United States. Since 2009, the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC; v7 and v8) Staging Manual for UM has specifically identified the GEP test as a prognostic factor that is recommended for collection as a part of clinical care. Further, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines for uveal melanoma include the DecisionDx-UM test result as a prognostic method for determining risk of metastasis and recommended differential surveillance regimens based on a Class 1A, 1B, and 2 result. DecisionDx-UM is the only prognostic test for uveal melanoma that has been validated in prospective, multi-center studies and it has been shown to be a superior predictor of metastasis compared to other prognostic factors such as chromosome 3 status, mutational status, AJCC stage, and cell type.

It is estimated that nearly 8 in 10 patients diagnosed with uveal melanoma in the U.S. receive the DecisionDx-UM test as part of their initial diagnostic workup. More information about the test and disease can be found at www.MyUvealMelanoma.com.