Ascendant Dx Seeks $5M to Bring Teardrop Cancer Test to Market

Ascendant Dx of Springdale is ready to start the clinical trial phase of a breast cancer screening tool that looks for markers in tears.

The company aims to raise $5 million to fund a large-scale clinical trial and the regulatory compliance process, said chairman and CEO Omid Moghadam.

Ongoing research, which has followed 300 patients in five states since mid-year, shows almost 90 percent sensitivity, meaning the test correctly identifies positive diagnoses almost 90 percent of the time, and more than 80 percent specifity, meaning negative results were accurate more than 80 percent of the time, Moghadam said.

According to the National Cancer Institute, about 50 percent of breast cancer diagnoses from mammograms are false positives and between 6 and 46 percent of women with invasive cancer will have negative mammograms.

The sensitivity of screenings for women with dense breasts is 24 percent, Moghadam said. “That’s pretty bad.”

And that is Ascendant’s target market, at least at the beginning.

If all goes to plan, the technology will be on the market in Europe within 18 months and in the U.S. within two years.

“The really risky portion of the work is done,” Moghadam said. “A lot of the scientific uncertainty is passed. We know these markers work.

“From this point on, we know we have to do the clinical trial and the regulatory, and that is a well-beaten path,” he said.

After the breast cancer screening tool goes to market, the Ascendant team will test for applications for other cancers with similar physiologies. 

Ascendant focuses on screening for diseases of women and children, especially cancer in women and autoimmune diseases in children.

Moghadam said the team has also partnered with scientists at Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego on a project to develop a test for systemic juvenile arthritis. The project is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.