Provista moves to larger quarters

Provista Life Sciences (Phoenix) reported relocating its headquarters to offices at 2400 Biltmore Circle, Ste. 1200, Phoenix, Arizona, enabling expansion of the three biotech diagnostic development companies overseen by Provista: GW Medical Technologies, Biomarker Technologies and RCP Diagnostics. Provista said it will continue to lease office space at that address, which will be converted to an on-site clinical diagnostics laboratory.

According to CEO William Gartner, “Relocating into larger headquarters allows Provista to more efficiently manage each operating unit’s business resources. At the same time, we now have the ability to establish the clinical laboratory that will be pivotal to accelerating the commercialization of diagnostics technologies currently in the final testing stage.”

Provista is an umbrella organization that identifies and acquires the rights to medical diagnostics technologies and then unifies their operational and business development activities under a single management. GW Medical Technologies is focused on commercializing a blood test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Biomarker Technologies is focused on commercialization of an early detection blood diagnostic for breast cancer. RCP Diagnostics is developing a screening diagnostic for women’s estrogen-related cancers: ovarian, uterine, cervical and breast.

Non-surgical AAA treatment study

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine (Stanford, California) have launched a study to find non-surgical treatments for abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA), a life-threatening condition currently treatable only with surgery.

By studying the effects of long-term exercise on AAAs, researchers hope to determine the exact mechanisms of how exercise can help prevent the growth of the aneurysms, and to identify potential drug therapies that mimic those mechanisms.

Researchers are recruiting a total of 1,400 patients between age 50 and 85 with small aneurysms (less than 5 cm) for the five-year, $17 million study funded by the Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The majority of volunteers will come in for one day of testing for the first part of the study to assess lifetime physical activity, overall health history, aortic size and profile of serum markers of AAA disease. About 340 of these subjects also will complete a three-year program of supervised exercise training to determine the effect of increased activity on aneurysm progression.

AAA rupture is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, with an estimated 15,000 people dying from AAA rupture each year.

Starting in 2007, new Medicare beneficiaries at risk for AAA can receive a free ultrasound screening for the disease starting with their 65th birthday and their “welcome to Medicare” physical examination (Medical Device Daily, Jan. 12, 2007).

Stanford is collaborating with Kaiser-Santa Clara and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System on the study.