Exact Sciences explores possible sale
Exact Sciences Corp., a Marlborough company in the cancer-screening business, said it is exploring a possible sale of the company.
Exact Sciences announced today that it has hired Leerink Swann LLC, a Boston-based investment banking firm that focuses on the healthcare sector, to assist its board in evaluating "strategic alternatives for the business, including, but not limited, to the sale of Exact or merger with another entity."
The company also said that it has promoted president Jeffrey R. Luber to president and chief executive; Luber replaces interim chief executive Patrick J. Zenner; a board member since 2003, Zenner will continue to serve on the company's board of directors.
Yesterday, with company stock on the Nasdaq Stock Market closing at $2.62 per share, Exact Sciences had a stock market value of $71 million.
In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Exact Sciences said yesterday that its auditors have expressed doubt about the company's "ability to continue as a going concern."
The filings indicated that the company has an accumulated deficit of $163 million and took in $1.8 million in revenue last year.
As of Dec. 31, the company had 14 employees, the filings said.
Exact Sciences has developed stool DNA technology that, like a colonoscopy, can detect colon cancer. There is only one stool DNA test on the market, and it is based on Exact's technology, the company noted.
Earlier this month, several medical groups, including the American Cancer Society, recommended alternatives to the colonoscopy, including stool DNA tests and another procedure called a "virtual colonoscopy," which has been described as a sort of super X-ray of the colon.
Colonoscopies are costly and unpleasant, and medical groups think that more consumers will opt for colon-cancer screenings if alternatives to colonoscopies are available.
Colon cancer is the nation's second leading cancer killer, killing about 50,000 people in the United States a year, the cancer society estimates.
(By Chris Reidy and Todd Wallack, Globe staff)
