A Medical Device Daily

CytoCore (Chicago), a company focused on early detection and treatment of reproductive-tract cancers, yesterday reported the appointment of Floyd Taub, MD, as CEO.

Taub is the founder and former CEO of Digene (Gaithersburg, Maryland), the developer of DNA-based testing (the HPV test) for cervical cancer-causing viruses. HPV testing is becoming the standard of care worldwide. In addition, Taub initiated development of non-toxic immune system enhancing drugs that benefit patients with cancer and infections.

Former CEO Dr. Augusto Ocana will serve as a consultant to CytoCore for domestic and international sales.

"The sale of Digene and other companies in the sector demonstrates the market value of CytoCore's diagnostic products. CytoCore is expanding this market and pursuing the additional medical and financial value that results from non-toxic reversal of pre-cancerous changes," said Taub.

"Dr. Taub has decades of experience with developing and working with leading-edge medical technologies, and then bringing commercially significant projects through to market readiness," said Dr. Richard Domanik, president at CytoCore. "He understands the steps needed for development and testing of products in the most time- and cost-effective ways prior to widespread distribution."

CytoCore anticipates the launch in fall of 2007 of marketing and distribution of the e2 Collector, currently in clinical trials, the first component of a suite of coordinated diagnostic tests and therapies that will impact women's reproductive healthcare on a global scale.

Prior to his leadership work in the commercial sector, Taub headed a pathology unit in the National Institutes of Health , focusing on immunopathology. Under his direction, the unit analyzed some of the first human monoclonal antibodies. In the late 1970s, while in the Laboratory of Biochemistry of the National Cancer Institute , he devised and implemented the first computerized image processing analysis of array hybridizations, today a major tool of genomics.

CytoCore says that its InPath System is being developed to provide cervical and uterine cancer screening systems that can be integrated into existing medical models.