Cancer Diagnostics Cancer is the second leading cause of death in most developed countries. Early detection of cancer is critical to successful cancer treatment, as therapies become less effective once the disease has spread and progressed. For example, the survival rate of early-detected breast and ovarian cancer patients is about 95%, and 90% for colorectal cancer. Therefore, there is an urgent need for better diagnostic tools that can detect these cancers early enough to be able to benefit from therapy. Cancer patients are typically treated with a combination of therapies that may involve surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, some of which have severe toxic side effects. Currently, the selection of the best treatment for a given cancer patient is largely a trial-and-error process, but is also equally critical in order to timely contain the disease while minimizing or eliminating unnecessary patient side effects. Once again, there is a critical need for innovative diagnostic tests that can aid healthcare givers in selecting optimal therapy timely, as well as assess efficacy of the chosen therapy and probability of disease recurrence.

Ayanda's Solution Ayanda aims to provide to the market a scientifically well-validated and proprietary biomarker for hormone dependent cancers based on the BARD1 protein. It has already been scientifically validated as a promising prognostic factor on tumour biopsies of breast and ovarian cancers, where it can potentially be used to assist in therapy selection. Recently, it was scientifically validated on serum specimens of breast and ovarian cancer patients for the detection and treatment monitoring of these diseases. We are currently conducting clinical validation studies with the BARD1-based biomarkers, in order to assess their efficacy as a novel blood-based screening test for breast and ovarian cancers. We benefit from the funding support of the Swiss Innovation Agency (KTI-CTI) project no. 9113.1 PFLS-LS.

Partnering Opportunities We are open to commercial partnership propositions relating to our cancer biomarker technology.

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