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{ 04 NOVEMBER 2008 }

Cancer loses its scare

New insights into the origins of cancers are helping in the development of improved methods for the early detection and treatment of cancer and precancerous tissue. That’s good news for patients, for tight healthcare budgets and for the young biotech and medtech companies that are working in this field.

Every minute, there are 23 new cases of cancer around the world and 14 people die from this scourge of the industrialized world. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in economically developed countries, and has even climbed to third place in developing countries. The burden of cancer is also on the rise as people are living longer – the number of new cancer cases rises dramatically after the age of 60 – and as people in developing countries are adopting the lifestyles of the Western world, such as smoking, higher consumption of saturated fatty acids and high-calorie foods.

An explosion of cancer treatment know-how

As cancer has become the plague of our modern age, myriads of scientists have dramatically improved the treatment of patients in recent decades. Today, the chances of surviving cancer are much higher than in the 1970s or ´80s. But many of these treatments pose physical stresses on the patient – as well as on insurer budgets. Better cancer prevention will undoubtedly be needed in order to spare patients from months of clinical treatment and healthcare budgets from unaffordable costs. But the established methods of cancer prevention are neither as accurate nor as convenient as they should be – and that’s exactly the chance for a new generation of prevention specialists.

On the way to early cancer detection

Cervical cancer and the contribution made by Heidelberg-based mtm laboratories are a good example of the necessary improvements. For more than 50 years, the prevalent form of cancer screening has been the so-called Pap test. At least 140 million Pap smears are taken each year, although its well-recognized limitations result in unacceptably high rates of false negatives and false positives, followed by enormous treatment costs. mtm's CINtec® technology, which is based on the detection of the highly specific cellular biomarker protein p16INK4a, now offers the potential for very sensitive and accurate diagnosis of early-stage cervical cancer – long before the tumor begins to grow invasively and cause symptoms. mtm’s fast revenue growth since the launch of its first products demonstrates the potential and the market need for accurate screening methods. Widespread usage of this technology would lead to a significant reduction of this second most common cancer in women worldwide.

mtm laboratories specializes in the development and marketing of products for the early detection, diagnosis, and prevention of cervical cancer, the second most common cancer in women. The company owns the rights for p16, a biomarker that is highly specific for cervical cancer, and has already developed and launched several diagnostic products based on this technology.

www.mtm-laboratories.com

Accurate, safe and more
convenient screening

Prevention is also the key to detecting and treating colon cancer at an early stage. Experts estimate that more than 90% of colon cancers could be detected in a non-invasive state and cured via colonoscopy if cancer screening were accepted by everyone at risk. The problem here is the fact that only 10-20% of patients have a screening colonoscopy performed and that the procedure is unpleasant and painful, requiring that the patient be sedated. German-based invendo medical has developed a way to overcome these limitations. This company’s sterile, single-use colonoscope combines a highly flexible endoscope shaft and a proprietary inverted sleeve technology, which apply only minimal forces against the intestinal wall while passing through narrow intestinal convolutions. In clinical tests on more than 300 patients, the vast majority of them reported only minimal discomfort or none at all, and no patient has had to be sedated. After closing a €4.5 million round of financing with Wellington Partners and TVM Capital, this company is now finalizing development and preparing for pivotal clinical trials to obtain regulatory approval from the U.S. FDA.

invendo medical is a developer of an innovative colonoscope. With its novel device invendo addresses key deficiencies in one of the largest screening markets in oncology today with more than 20 million colonoscopies being performed every year, thereof 14 million in the U.S. In contrast to established colonoscopes, invendo’s patented device is sterile and for single use only.

www.invendo-medical.com

Latest invendo News

Wellington Partners and TVM Capital invest in invendo medical ... more »

Given the fact that the lifetime risk for colon cancer can be as high as 6% and colon cancer screening is therefore being promoted and reimbursed in all developed countries, the market potential for invendo is huge. Around 20 million procedures are already being performed each year, the majority of them in the United States. In fact, a recent study by the Munich Institute of Health Economics has demonstrated that the costs of nationwide prevention would amount to just some 10% of the costs for the required treatment of colon cancer.

Better prevention, longer life

The mtm and invendo examples show the same pattern: Their innovative products are addressing billion-dollar screening markets and helping to protect tens of thousands of people from contracting cancer and eventually dying of it. At the same time, they are helping to ease the impact of exploding treatment costs on healthcare budgets – in the case of colon cancer, by a factor of 5-10. So it will only be a matter of time before we are seeing more diagnostic and medtech companies engaged in this global battle against cancer.