Clarient, Inc. (Nasdaq: CLRT), a premier technology and services resource for pathologists, oncologists and the pharmaceutical industry, and BioView Ltd. (TASE: BIOV) today jointly announced that they will collaborate on studies to validate the clinical utility of a non-invasive test for the early detection of non-small cell lung cancer.
The test, which uses a patient's sputum and was originally developed at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, is expected to be particularly useful to aid in the diagnosis of early stage lung cancer for smokers and other at-risk populations.
The agreement between the two companies provides Clarient the right to negotiate an exclusive agreement to commercialize the test following its joint development and validation.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, with more than 250,000 newly-diagnosed cases and more than 160,000 deaths annually in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute. Non-small cell lung cancer accounts for approximately 85 percent of all lung cancers.
The test uses DNA probes exclusively licensed to BioView by M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and BioView's proprietary Target Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (T-FISH) technology to screen for specific genetic biomarkers that may indicate the presence of cancer cells in sputum. FISH is a well-established diagnostic tool that is the basis of BioView's technology, noted President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alan Schwebel.
Initial internal studies of the test have demonstrated its validity, Dr. Schwebel said.