A Medical Device Daily
SpectraScience (San Diego) said it has been awarded a European patent for its Optical Biopsy System for tissue diagnosis.
"This patent is important to the company's optical biopsy technology because it provides protection in the areas of tissue surveillance, characterization, diagnosis and treatment," said CEO Jim Hitchin. "It supports the company's fundamental technology of non-invasive, low-level laser diagnosis of pre-cancerous and cancerous tissue. This is another key patent in our expanding intellectual property portfolio that underscores our commitment at SpectraScience to develop better, more reliable cancer screening technologies."
SpectraScience said it holds about 60 patents worldwide that have been issued or are pending on its WavSTAT Optical Biopsy and LUMA Cervical Imaging Systems. These devices are used to diagnose tissue quickly to determine if it is normal, pre-cancerous, or cancerous, the company noted.
The WavSTAT and LUMA systems are FDA-approved for detecting pre-cancerous and cancerous tissue in the colon and cervix, respectively. An evaluation of the WavSTAT for detection of pre-cancers in the throat is being tested.
"Accurate imaging is critical to earlier and more effective identification of normal, pre-cancerous and/or cancerous tissue, and this invention provides methods of making our screening devices more useful to the physician and, more importantly, to the patient," Hitchin added.
In other patent activity: Aduromed Industries (Bethel, Connecticut), a provider of medical waste treatment systems, said it filed a U.S. patent last week to protect its technology for its new standard, containerized MedClean systems designed to provide a turnkey solution for onsite regulated medical waste sterilization and volume reduction.
The patent application, titled "Containerized Medical Waste Treatment System and Related Method," focuses on the design and configuration of Aduromed's new standard, containerized MedClean Systems.
"The Aduromed team has invested significant time and effort into evolving its operating model to meet the business and regulatory demands of the healthcare institutions it targets," said Scott Grisanti, president/CEO of Aduromed. "The resultant solutions have the potential to produce a sustainable competitive advantage, and we have taken significant steps to protect this intellectual property through this patent filing. The patent pre-stages market introduction of the MedClean series of containerized systems that are designed to make it easier for healthcare institutions to implement onsite processing solutions for regulated medical waste that reduce costs, mitigate risk, and enhance green profiles."
The patent application also covers the specific protocol employed to accomplish sterilization in the company's autoclave subsystem. The protocol implements a sequence of differential heating and vacuum cycles designed to optimize efficacy and balance cycle time.
"The treatment protocol included in the patent is the result of research conducted with customers and industry experts that has yielded the most extensive body of work in the industry," Grisanti said. "This tested and validated protocol is a key component of our proprietary software and hardware platform, enabling MedClean solutions to meet and exceed the most demanding efficacy standards throughout all 50 states while providing the throughput required to economically address the highest volume generators of regulated medical waste. Our third-party validated efficacy results, combined with first in industry MedClean container configurations, are expected to accelerate adoption of Aduromed's solutions."