Cerenome wins Florida Blue coverage for CNSide CSF molecular tests
Cerenome's CNSide Diagnostics subsidiary has secured an in-network ancillary provider agreement with Florida Blue, the state's largest health insurer, effective 1 October 2026. The deal is the first CNSide payer contract to bundle tumour cell enumeration with the newly launched CSF Molecular Profile tests, extending contracted reimbursement across both cellular and molecular cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) diagnostics for central nervous system cancers.
The Florida Blue agreement adds approximately six million covered lives to CNSide's contracted network. Combined with previously announced deals, the Houston-based company now reports contracted access covering roughly 164 million commercial and Medicare Advantage lives, which it describes as part of a systematic national reimbursement build-out.
What the tests do
CNSide offers two molecular profiling products now included under the agreement. CNSide CSF Molecular Profile, Solid Tumor provides DNA and RNA analysis of CSF from patients with suspected or confirmed primary CNS tumours or solid tumours that have spread to the brain or leptomeningeal space. CNSide CSF Molecular Profile, Hematologic Malignancy performs the same analysis for patients with suspected or confirmed haematological malignancies involving the CNS.
The molecular profiling methodology was evaluated in a peer-reviewed real-world study of 1,391 CSF specimens from patients across all three CNS cancer categories, published in The Journal of Liquid Biopsy. Cerenome's existing tumour cell enumeration test has a wider published evidence base, including 12 peer-reviewed publications and prospective multicentre data from the FORESEE clinical study. More than 11,000 CNSide tests have been performed across more than 120 US cancer institutions since 2020.
Marc Hedrick, president and chief executive of Cerenome, said the Florida Blue agreement advances CNSide "as a broader CSF diagnostics platform for CNS oncology, combining tumour-cell analysis and molecular profiling to better characterise and monitor cancers involving the central nervous system."
Market context
Liquid biopsy for CNS indications is an emerging and contested diagnostic segment. Most commercially established liquid biopsy platforms focus on blood-based circulating tumour DNA, where players such as Foundation Medicine, Guardant Health and Tempus have built scale. CSF-based testing occupies a smaller but clinically meaningful niche: leptomeningeal metastases and primary CNS tumours are often difficult to characterise from peripheral blood due to limited shedding into the systemic circulation, making CSF the preferred substrate for molecular analysis.
Payer coverage remains one of the principal barriers to adoption for speciality oncology diagnostics. Securing in-network status with a large regional insurer such as Florida Blue, which serves all 67 Florida counties, provides both direct reimbursement certainty and a reference agreement that can support negotiations with other payers. The 164 million covered lives figure reflects contracted footprint rather than test volume, and Cerenome has not disclosed revenue or utilisation metrics associated with its payer agreements to date.
Cerenome's wider platform includes the therapeutic candidate REYOBIQ (rhenium Re186 obisbemeda), which is in clinical evaluation for leptomeningeal metastases, recurrent glioblastoma and paediatric brain cancers, alongside an AI-driven data integration layer. The diagnostic and therapeutic programmes are positioned by the company as mutually reinforcing within a single CNS oncology platform, though the commercial interdependence of those two arms remains to be demonstrated in practice.