DermTech, Inc. announced that the Defense Health Agency's Lab Joint Working Group has recommended the Company's foundational assay included in the DermTech Melanoma Test (DMT) for coverage by TRICARE. TRICARE is the health care program for uniformed service members, retirees and their families around the world. This coverage recommendation makes the foundational assay of the DMT available to TRICARE's approximately 9 million members and beneficiaries of the Military Health System.

The DMT is the first non-invasive approach to enhance melanoma detection with a greater than 99% negative predictive value (NPV). DermTech's total covered lives in the U.S. are now approximately 113 million, which includes 68 million for Medicare/Medicare Advantage and 45 million for commercial and governmental payers. DermTech originally marketed its foundational assay under the name Pigmented Lesion Assay (PLA).

The PLA assessed pigmented skin lesions, moles or dark skin spots for melanoma. In particular, the PLA detected expression of the LINC00518 (“LINC”) and preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma (“PRAME”) genes using an amplification process called reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (“RT-PCR”). The Company introduced its second-generation PLA test, PLAplusTM, in 2021, which could also identify the presence of TERT using a DNA sequencing technique and adding the TERT promoter mutation analyses to the PLA gene expression test.

The DMT tests for LINC and PRAME and may be ordered with or without the add-on test for TERT. Positive results for LINC, PRAME, or TERT correlate with the presence of melanoma. If the biomarkers are not detected, this result indicates a greater than 99% probability that the mole being tested is not melanoma.