Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Zenosense, Inc. (ZENO) Steadily Progressing Toward Commercialization of a Low Cost, Rapid Detection Device for Both MRSA & Lung Cancer

Zenosense has posted some solid news in the last two months on the progress of their rapid detection sensor technology for sniffing out MRSA/SA Super-Bug (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and lung cancer from patient’s breath. Devices whose advent could create a paradigm shift in currently costly, time-consuming and/or dangerous testing methodologies.

Late last month, the company was proud to report that their MRSA/SA detector prototype successfully scored a 95% plus detection rate in clinical testing, with key circuit board integration advancement also occurring, including a powerful solid-state processor and low power piezoelectric (electric charge created through applied mechanical stress on certain types of material) sampling pump. Ongoing development of the company’s core technology has led to a simple, yet effective design, which neatly encapsulates all the hardware and circuitry, and yet is able to run continuously for an entire standard shift thanks to the device’s low power consumption profile, while still incorporating a four sensor parallel array. The MRSA/SA detector prototype does continuous sampling at a rate of once every handful of milliseconds, rapidly testing cultured patient headspace for key VOC (volatile organic compound) indicators, using a sophisticated architecture that spans air injection capable of sampling a negative vacuum, suction, data download, and a self-cleaning cycle.

Such a device is a quantum leap beyond collecting swab samples and sending them off to the lab for testing, a process which can take considerable time and money. Even advanced PCR-based (polymerase chain reaction) rapid testing still requires swabbing and sequencing. A logistically inefficient approach considering that, despite seeming declines from 2005 CDC/JAMA figures of around 95k infections and over 18k related MRSA fatalities, antibiotic resistant MRSA infection led to more deaths in the U.S. alone than emphysema, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, and homicides combined in recent years. Despite the latest studies indicating invasive MRSA infection and fatality rates have declined to around 80k and 11k respectively or less, patients are twice as likely to die when they have MRSA, compared to methicillin-treatable Staph, with hospitalized MRSA patients costing the healthcare system as much as $4.2B a year according to an Issue Brief from the Pew Charitable Trust.

Indeed, broader hospital-acquired infection (HAI) prevalence and its results, as reported by Kaiser Health News, indicate the true need for a rapid detection device. As many as 1 in every 25 hospital patients were found to have acquired some kind of infection according to the Kaiser study, resulting in over 75k deaths each year. A growing elderly population of rapidly retiring Baby Boomers, with almost 11k per day becoming eligible for retirement, are particularly at risk given the sizeable number who are increasingly on some form of immune-suppressing drug for conditions like alopecia, arthritis, Crohn’s disease, M.S., psoriasis, or a recent transplant.

ZENO’s work on applying their detection technology to lung cancer has also seen some nice traction in October and November of this year, with the latest report out earlier this month indicating that the company is already in advanced pre-commercial prototyping on their lung cancer detector. The device, being developed via Sgenia group company and ZENO partner, Zenon Biosystem, even has advanced filtering technology that is specifically designed to target and screen out VOC biomarkers not associated with lung cancer. Subsystem optimization, including filtering technology using molecular sieves built right into the layered/mixed sensor array, as well as a nanometric sensing mesh to ensure a maximum detection footprint, has gone quite well, leading to high confidence at ZENO that these low cost components will nevertheless achieve top line results in the final device design.

Zenon has even made some serious breakthroughs with novel metal oxide sensor materials not currently commercially available anywhere else and the incorporation of a micro gas chromatography chip, as well as quartz crystal sensor with gas sorbent substrate, means the lung cancer detection device will likely provide some of the best pre-detection screening, as well as highly-accurate lung cancer-associated VOC sensing possible. Two identical pre-commercial detection devices are either being manufactured or have already been completed as of the time of this writing, according to the given timeline estimates. This places ZENO squarely on-track for subsequent clinical testing and the company is currently gearing up for a planned lung cancer detection trial in cooperation with Zenon. ZENO could bring an extremely cost-competitive alternative to the lung cancer detection market, offering a compelling new choice over the industry standard, “low-dose” CT scanning, which actually increases the risk of cancer, using around 150 to 1.1k times the radiation of a typical x-ray.

Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the U.S. for both men and women, resulting in more deaths than the next three most common cancers combined (breast, colon and pancreatic), and is even more prevalent in women than breast cancer. ACA data even indicates that among the 108k new cases of lung cancer in women diagnosed each year, a staggering 66% plus will perish, throwing a bright spotlight on the underlying demand curve for the emergence of a rapid detection system like the one Zenosense has under development.

For more information on Zenosense, visit: www.zenosense.net

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