PHC and NovaScan have announced the launch of a collaboration through which they will seek to explore the feasibility of MarginScan, an investigational ex vivo medical device that will seek to support clinicians in detecting non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC).
PHC is a subsidiary of PHC Group, a global healthcare company that develops, manufactures, sells and services solutions across the business domains of diabetes management, healthcare solutions, and diagnostics and life sciences. PHC’s In Vitro Diagnostics Division has collaborated with partners for more than 30 years to develop and manufacture high-performance medical devices including blood glucose monitoring systems to help support effective medical treatment.
NovaScan is a US company engaged in clinical-stage diagnostics and tissue detection in the oncology field. NovaScan has developed proprietary technology for real-time detection of the presence of cancer tissue, and is expanding its business to commercialise its point-of-care platform to medical institutions in the future.
PHC and NovaScan are collaborating to explore feasibility of a device to help enable comprehensive real-time margin detection for NMSC (ulcerated basal cell carcinoma [BCC] pictured), which are the most common cancers in the world. The American Academy of Dermatology estimates that one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime, and the vast majority of these will be NMSC.
One of the proposed uses of MarginScan is to seek to support Mohs surgery procedures for skin cancer treatment. Mohs micrographic surgery is an operative method used to detect the presence or absence of a tumour in the margins of a surgical excision, thus enabling clinicians to minimise the impact on surrounding normal tissue. Currently, Mohs is the only modality for skin cancer treatment that involves comprehensive intraoperative margin assessment. MarginScan has the potential to help reduce patient morbidity and improve outcomes both for patients and clinicians.
This collaboration will integrate PHC’s manufacturing excellence with NovaScan’s advanced technology for detecting carcinoma tissue. The two companies will also explore other potential strategic collaborations to provide new value to patients and healthcare providers in the oncology field.