Health Discovery Corpn (HDC) has entered into an exclusive agreement with the Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center of New York at Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers in New York City to develop new molecular diagnostic tests for the early detection of pancreatic cancer.
The Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center is under the leadership of Dr Michael Wayne, Dr Franklin Kassim and Dr Avram Cooperman.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center will provide all specimens from its collected specimen banks, specimens on all new patients and all associated clinical and outcomes data. The specimens will include tissue, blood and urine.
HDC will use its patent protected SVM-based discovery technology and expert science team to develop these new molecular diagnostic tests for pancreatic cancer in a similar fashion to the urine-based prostate cancer test developed by HDC and licensed for development and commercialization to Quest Diagnostics on a royalty-based, world-wide co-exclusive basis.
As per the agreement, HDC will also own all of the intellectual property and commercialization rights to these newly discovered molecular diagnostic tests for pancreatic cancer and HDC intends to immediately partner with a large clinical laboratory for development, marketing and commercialization of these tests.
Stephen Barnhill, chairman and CEO of HDC, said: “We are very excited to partner with Drs. Wayne, Kassim and Cooperman and their colleagues, all experts in pancreatic cancer, to work together in the development of new molecular diagnostic tests for the early detection of pancreatic cancer. The specimen bank established by these doctors provides a rare opportunity to accomplish this vital goal.”
Cooperman, surgical director of the Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center, said: “A century of treating pancreatic cancer leaves much to be humble about. I believe that working with Dr Barnhill, his expert scientific team and the proven SVM technology at HDC, we have a unique opportunity to develop a new molecular diagnostic test to identify pancreatic cancer at a pre-clinical stage early enough to be treated more effectively than is current practice on today’s patients.”