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AMD Discovers How to Predict Cancer Drug Effectiveness

Breakthrough:
Accelerated Medical Diagnostics discovered how to use accelerator mass spectrometry to trace a small dose of of an anti-cancer drug, allowing doctors to determine if the treatment will work, before giving the full dose.

Business:
Accelerated Medical Diagnostics, United States

The Story:
Drs Chong-xian Pan and Paul Henderson of Accelerated Medical Diagnostics (AMD), have developed a technology that can determine the effectiveness of a cancer treatment, before giving a patient the full dose of the medication.

PlatinDx traces the small drug dose and measures the tumor's responses such as drug uptake, drug efflux and drug-DNA, allowing doctors to predict whether or not the drug will be effective in killing the tumor cells.

The method is based on accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), an ultrasensitive technology that is uniquely capable of measuring the fate of chemotherapy microdoses in clinical samples.

The technology uses accelerator mass spectrometry to trace the effectiveness of an anti-cancer drug, and could save billions of dollars in ineffective treatments, not to mention saving patients from unnecessary side effects.

According to Paul Henderson, the company CEO, about 70 percent of lung patients get no benefit from chemotherapy, but endure terrible side effects.

The new procedure, which won $10,000 in the Big Bang! Business Plan competition at the University of California Davis, aims to get the right therapy for the right tumor.

Currently in clinical trials, the technology could be available to the market in two to four years.

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