NCI-Funded Device Start-Ups Offer Game-Changing Technologies

Cancer is a formidable, unpredictable set of diseases, and despite decades of expensive research has managed to stay one step ahead of scientists trying to find a cure. Death rates from cancer overall have declined only slightly from the levels seen 60 years ago: 193.9 cancer deaths per 100,000 Americans occurred in 1950, and as of 2010 this figure was 186.2, according to the American Cancer Society. However, research on this complex disease is entering a new era, with recent advances in molecular science and genetics helping to identify distinct cancer “signatures” that can help predict which patients are most likely to benefit from specific drug therapies, aiding development of targeted drugs to match the unique molecular and genetic make-up of individual patients’ tumors, and ushering in new strategies for dealing with troubling metastatic disease. This new knowledge is also being put to use in next-generation device technology, including highly sensitive detection devices and diagnostic tests, drug-eluting implants, and the measurement of disease metastasis and progression by circulating tumor cell (CTC) capture, among many other innovations.

A number of these potentially "game-changing" devices are now advancing toward commercialization, with some of the most promising being developed by an innovative group of young companies that presented this...