NEW YORK – Startup firm Detect-Ion said Friday that it is partnering with the Moffitt Cancer Center on the development of breath-based point-of-care tests for the early detection of lung cancer.
Tampa, Florida-based Detect Ion said that it plans to use its Clarion mass spectrometry platform in the pilot project to demonstrate the effectiveness of using volatile organic compound biomarkers for the differentiation of lung cancer-positive patients from controls. The company noted that conventional lung cancer screening through low-dose CT is typically available only to patients who are identified as having high risk of lung cancer based on their age and history of smoking. Those screening methods also tend to have low uptake.
Detect-Ion CEO Ashish Chaudhary said in a statement that the firm's technology is used for the detection of trace-level chemical signatures and identification of volatile organic compound biomarkers at concentrations in the range of parts per trillion.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"Since local therapy for early-stage lung cancer is associated with a substantially greater likelihood of cure, our pilot seeks to provide an additional approach for early detection of the disease," Matthew Schabath, co-leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at Florida-based Moffitt and the co-principal investigator of the project, said in a statement. "We will begin with late-stage patients to identify robust VOC biomarkers, and if successful, we will conduct a follow-up study on early-stage patients to determine the potential for early detection."