SomaLogic has developed a pioneering technology, the SomaScan® Platform, the first and only platform, that simultaneously measures 7,000 proteins. The company's technology is based on proprietary aptamers, called SOMAmers®, which can measure these unique proteins with high sensitivity and specificity across a large dynamic range. Using over 60,000 samples, artificial intelligence and machine learning powered bioinformatics algorithms have created 12 SomaSignal™ tests. The Cardiovascular Disease in Type 2 Diabetes (CVD-T2D) Test result produces risk score for developing cardiovascular events such as heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, or cardiovascular death within 4 years, with median time to event of 1.7 years across the different risk categories. SomaSignal™ testing has the potential to effectively risk-stratify patients, determine disease prognosis, and elucidate disease drivers for clinicians. Analytic and clinical validity findings, using this patented technology, have already been published by the company or collaborators in scientific and clinical manuscripts.
SomaLogic is looking to understand if the test, when used by practitioners, helps clinicians determine cardiovascular risk status and achieve better care for patients with diabetes. To achieve this goal, SomaLogic is looking for an established, innovative approach to gather high-quality prospective clinical utility data in as short a time as possible. Determining the clinical utility of the SomaSignal tests will be essential to increase access to the test and is required to gain coverage and reimbursement.
Accordingly, this study will collect high-quality randomized controlled data from a nationally representative sample of practicing primary care physicians and cardiologists. To first determine how these physicians currently manage cardiovascular risk factors in patients with Type 2 Diabetes (T2DM) and then to determine if introducing the test results of the CVD-T2D test will change their clinical decision making. Data from this study will better illuminate which use case is best served by SomaSignal testing (and thus the greatest clinical utility) and what physician characteristics (e.g., age, practice setting, training) are associated with these practice changes.
This study uses simulated patient cases, called Clinical Performance and Value vignettes (CPVs), a proven methodology that is widely used to rapidly measure physician care decisions. CPVs are a unique and scalable tool that standardizes practice measurement by having all providers care for the same (virtual) patients. With all providers caring for the same patients, the CPVs generate unbiased data that yields powerful insights into clinical decision making and how these decisions change with the introduction of a new product or solution. Data from the CPVs demonstrates the presence or absence of the clinical utility of a diagnostic test. The results, positive or negative, are published in peer-reviewed literature and if they are positive, favorably impact coverage and reimbursement decisions.
The primary goal will be to determine whether informing clinicians of the CVD-T2D test results leads to changes in prescriptions and/or medical management of virtual participants with T2D in concordance with CVD in Type 2 Diabetes results compared with virtual participants whose physicians are not informed of the test results.
