Perception Vision Medical Technologies Co. Ltd. (Pvmed) raised around $14 million in a series A financing round, to further develop artificial intelligence (AI) cancer treatment solutions for the two major tumor treatment methods, radiotherapy, and surgery.
Abk Biomedical Inc. has completed an oversubscribed $30 million series C funding round to support IDE approval for Eye90 microspheres designed to improve outcomes for patients with liver cancer. The departure point for the technology’s development is U.S. FDA-cleared Y90 technology such as Boston Scientific’s Therasphere and Sir-Spheres developed by Sydney, Australia-based Sirtex Medical Ltd. “They are the only radioembolization microspheres on the market and that is the clinical space in which we will be submitting our IDE application,” Abk chief business officer Gary Donofrio told BioWorld. “Hopefully we’ll get approvals for the pivotal study and eventually to market in that space. It’s going to be great to be able to innovate and improve on what’s already been done there.”
In 2022, neuroscience research made significant advances by understanding the role of large-scale neuronal connections in disorders. So did cancer research.
Seekin Inc.’s cancer mutation detection kit Pancanseek for leukemia patients has received a CE-IVD mark, expanding the company’s reach in the testing space.
A new acute coronary syndrome detection system developed by Neuome Peptides Pte. Ltd.’s aims to make tests for the frequently lethal condition faster, more precise and less invasive. Neuome’s Truheart is a point-of-care assay for cardiovascular disease that is used in the company’s established Instadetect assay development platform. The assay measures the biomarkers troponins I and T and myoglobin.
Prenetics Global Ltd. agreed to acquire a majority stake in Act Genomics Holdings Co. Ltd. as part of a move to target the precision oncology market. Prenetics will issue 19.9 million class A ordinary shares and pay $20 million in cash to complete the acquisition.
Repeat expansions of two or more base pairs cause dozens of neurological disorders – Huntington’s disease, which is caused by an expansion of the triplet CAG in the coding sequence for huntingtin, is perhaps the most famous one. Now, investigators at Stanford University have shown that cancer genomes, too, frequently feature repeat expansions.
Fujifilm Corp. inked an agreement to purchase the global digital pathology business of Inspirata Inc., paving the way for expansion of its Synapse enterprise imaging offering. The transaction includes Inspirata’s Dynamyx software, which Fujifilm has distributed in the U.K. and certain European Union countries since mid-2020. Under the agreement, Fujifilm will acquire Inspirata’s digital pathology technology, as well as employees and customers associated with the brand. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. It is expected to close in early 2023.
Cofactor Genomics Inc. opened the non-small-cell lung cancer portion of its study of the Oncoprism test, which predicts response to immunotherapy. The Predicting Immunotherapy Efficacy from Analysis of Pre-treatment Tumor Biopsies (PREDAPT) trial will study the test’s predictive ability in 11 cancers in total.
Guardant Health Inc. reported positive results from the ECLIPSE trial demonstrating 83% sensitivity of its DNA blood test in detecting colorectal cancer (CRC) in average-risk adults. Specificity was 90% in people without advanced neoplasia, as well as in those who had a negative colonoscopy result.