A Springdale company is raising $5 million to move forward with its plans to sell breast cancer screening tests.
So far, Ascendant Diagnostic LLC has sold $375,000 worth of securities, according to its filing last month with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.
Founded in 2011, Ascendant wants to market breast cancer screening tests that are based on research by Dr. V. Suzanne Klimberg, director of the Breast Cancer Program at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, said Omid Moghadam, the CEO of Ascendant.
Her research looked in patients’ tears for protein biomarkers that would indicate the presence of breast cancer, he said.
The research initially was done at UAMS and then transferred to Ascendant to commercialize it, Moghadam said.
The money raised from the offering will be used to pay for a Food & Drug Administration clinical trial, which might take about a year. From there, it would take about another year before it’s available in the U.S. market.
Once approved, the screening tests could be sold to places such as doctors’ offices.
He said accuracy of the screening is in the “high 80s, but we think we can push it over … 90 percent.”
A mammography exam’s accuracy depends on the breast tissues, but could be as low as 23 percent accurate, Moghadam said.
“We’re talking to investors and doing due diligence with a few of them,” he said. “So I’m hopeful that by fall we have closed the round and will get started on recruiting patients.”
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