invasive skin cancer detection device called the Verisante Aura that uses a light ray to determine whether a lesion is malignant or not.The technology is a breakthrough in early detection of skin cancer and can easily be used by any healthcare professional such as a physician’s
assistant or a nurse to scan every mole on a patient’s body before a doctor reviews the results to decide whether a certain lesion should be
biopsied or not.
In the summer of 2010, Vancouver’s Verisante Technology, Inc., a medical device company, obtained the rights to the Verisante Aura. The Verisante
Aura has been in development at the British Columbia Cancer Agency for more than six years and has been tested on approximately
1,000 lesions at the Skin Care Centre at the Vancouver General Hospital. Published preliminary clinical results have shown that the Verisante
Aura caught every case of melanoma among the 274 lesions flagged for biopsy.
The device will greatly aid doctors in assessing skin lesions and reducing patient wait times. While there are about 550 dermatologists in Canada,
1 in 7 (or approximately 5 million) Canadians will get skin cancer at some point during their lives.
Currently if a patient has a lesion on their body, they have to undergo a biopsy, which is a surgical procedure to determine whether the lesion is
malignant or not. However, this new technological approach, called “optical biopsy,” provides a number of practical benefits as listed below
over existing detection methods. They include:
Using a light ray, the device measures 21 chemical bio-markers to scan a mole or lesion to determine skin cancer in under two seconds.It will allow for early and more accurate detection of skin cancer, which is the most treatable of all cancers when diagnosed early.
It will avoid unnecessary biopsies and also detect more early-stage skin cancers that would otherwise go unnoticed.It will reduce health-care costs by enabling early diagnosis.It will enable patient comfort and convenience by reducing wait times and providing immediate diagnoses.
The relatively low cost of the Verisante Aura makes it attractive to private health practices and larger healthcare facilities alike.
Late last year, Verisante Technology, Inc. entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with the British Columbia Cancer Agency for rights to
the lung cancer detection device. The device, termed the Verisante Core, has been clinically tested so far on more than 50 patients with excellent
results. Both, the Verisante Aura and the Verisante Core share the same proprietary platform technology developed by the British Columbia
Cancer Agency, but the operating software and probe technology are unique to each device.
This platform technology is fully extensible to early detection systems for other cancers such as colon, cervical and gastrointestinal cancers.
Neither the Verisante Aura nor the Verisante Core are approved for sale at this time, however, the company expects to launch the Verisante
Aura in Canada in late 2011 subject to approval by Health Canada.
For more information on the Verisante Aura and the Verisante Core, the product development team and for latest news, please visit: https://www.verisante.com/.