A Medical Device Daily

Predictive medicine company PreMD (Toronto) reported that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a Notice of Allowance for the patent, titled "Direct Assay of Cholesterol in Skin Samples Removed by Tape Stripping."

PREVU(x) LT is the second product in the PREVU(x) line of skin cholesterol tests for use in the life insurance industry and potentially other applications that could take advantage of high through-put environments. The patent is also pending in Canada, Europe, and Asia in an effort to secure global protection.

"The PREVU(x) LT patent is a very important component of our intellectual property," said Brent Norton, president/CEO of PreMD. "The acceptance of this patent is a significant milestone for PreMD because it continues to solidify the positioning of our technologies and products in the most important regions of the world."

PREVU(x), the company's lead product line, addresses the problem of cholesterol level detection in relation to cardiovascular disease. Through a noninvasive procedure, the PREVU(x) platform measures the amount of cholesterol accumulated in the skin tissues, as opposed to blood.

No fasting or other patient preparation is required for the test. Clinical studies have shown that as cholesterol accumulates on artery walls, it also accumulates in other tissues, including the skin. High levels of skin cholesterol are correlated with higher incidence of coronary artery disease (CAD).

The company's cancer tests include ColorectAlert, LungAlert and a breast cancer test. PreMD's product development facility is at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario).

In other patent news: Biomoda (Albuquerque, New Mexico), maker of patented early lung cancer detection testing and other cancer diagnostics, said that it is continuing to expand its portfolio with a patent pending for the use of its patented porphyrin molecule to detect different cell variations of lung cancer.

John Cousins, president of Biomoda, said, "We are protecting the value of our core patents with patents that detail improvements and new uses of our strong, innovative technology. This prevents those on the periphery from attempting to target our patents with a so-called 'picket fence' of minor patents that could weaken our powerful market position."

Cousins added: "This additional patent, filed in Washington DC . . . only two weeks after the company's most recent patent filing, underscores the critical importance of protecting valuable proprietary technology." He said the patent "details a number of ways that a mixture of porphyrin molecules will bind in special ways with the different types of lung cancer."

Dr. Herbert Whitaker, director of research, said, "The lighting characteristics of cancer cells, which glow red under fluorescent light after binding with the Biomoda molecules and can be viewed under a microscope, will vary depending on the cell type of the cancer and the patent explains these characteristics."

The Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota) and Biomoda are jointly conducting a validation study of Biomoda's technology, a noninvasive cytology-based lung cancer assay.