Avant Diagnostics (AVDX): Battling Ovarian Cancer
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Ovarian cancer is a deadly disease and should be taken seriously. Early detection and monitoring of tumor development is the key to survival. If someone gets tested regularly and detects ovarian cancer early, their five-year survival rate can be as high as 93 percent, compared to a five-year survival rate of only 18 percent if detected in the later stages. Avant Diagnostics, Inc. (OTCQB: AVDX) is a medical diagnostic technology company that specializes in large panel biomarker screening. The company’s first test, OvaDx, is a sophisticated microarray-based test designed to detect pre-symptomatic ovarian cancer by measuring the activation of the immune system in blood samples in response to early stage ovarian tumor cell development.
According to the American Cancer Society, more than 21,300 women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year, ultimately leading to 14,200 deaths. With early detection, your chances obviously improve, as mentioned above, so making the OvaDx test part of your annual checkup should be a no-brainer. Considering the ramifications of just going with the flow and cutting corners on regular monitoring of tumor development during the treatment process, one would ascertain that constant observation of which drugs are working and how well they are working would be greatly beneficial to the patient.
The ovarian cancer diagnostic market, where Avant Diagnostics competes, is worth more than $2 billion. With innovative, necessary testing procedures like OvaDx, the company is positioned to become a major game changer upon FDA approval. Some of the major players engaged in personalized medicine and molecular diagnostics involving biomarkers are global microarray market leader Affymetrix (NASDAQ: AFFX), which was recently reported as having been acquired by competitor Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) for approximately $1.3 billion.
The standard approach to ovarian cancer utilizes the combination of a platinum compound, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (NYSE: BMY) Platinol (cisplatin) or Paraplatin (carboplatin), and a Taxane, such as Sanofi’s (NYSE: SNY) Taxotere (docetaxel) or Phyton Biotech’s Taxol (paclitaxel). However, for patients with platinum-resistant/refractory ovarian cancer, early detection is really the brass ring, even with such good news out recently as Merck (NYSE: MRK) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) receiving FDA approval for the first Phase III study of avelumab, an investigational, fully human PD-L1 (programmed death-ligand 1) inhibitor that could emerge as a treatment for platinum-resistant/refractory ovarian cancer.
For more information, visit the company website at www.avantdiagnostics.com
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