A Medical Device Daily

Health Discovery Corp. (HDC; Savannah, Georgia) reported that Dr. Richard Caruso will change his role with the company from member of the board of directors to senior advisor in order to activate a new independent company called Smart Personalized Medicine to be able to pursue the goal of developing a breast cancer prognostic test using HDC's support vector machine (SVM) technology and the cooperation of the University of Texas-M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston).

Caruso said, "I have established ... Smart Personalized Medicine to pursue the goal of developing a superior breast cancer prognostic test using HDC's SVM technology. As such, I would like to now finalize negotiations and execute a license and development contract with HDC in the field of breast cancer in exchange for an HDC participatory equity position in this new company and a per-test royalty to be paid to HDC after successful commercialization of the new test."

He added that "the HDC licensing attorney has advised both HDC and me that to avoid any potential conflict-of-interest issues in my negotiations with HDC, I should be negotiating from an independent position and not as a member of the HDC board. I respect that opinion and am honoring that request."

HDC is a developer of SVM-based molecular diagnostic and prognostic tests in genomics and proteomics, as well as digital image analysis in pathology and radiology.