Market Opportunity

Cancer Diagnostics Market

The global cancer burden is significant with an estimated 50.6 million people living with cancer, 19.3 million new cases and 10.0 million deaths in 2020.1 The incidence of cancer is expected to rise to 28.4 million new cases by 2040 due to population aging and growth. The most common diagnosed cancers worldwide were breast (11.7% of all new cases), lung (11.4%), colorectal (10.0%), prostate (7.3%) and stomach (5.6%) cancers. Cancer is a leading cause of premature death with the highest burdens in China, Europe and North America. The cancer burden can be reduced by improved prevention, early detection, availability of cancer screening programs and effective treatment to improve patient outcomes and reduce mortality.

Diagnostics for earlier detection and monitoring could improve treatment options, patient outcomes and survival for this expanding public health crisis. INOVIQ is targeting cancer diagnostic market segments currently valued at over US$15 billion globally for some of the world’s most common and deadliest cancers including breast, ovarian and other cancers.

 

Unmet need for earlier cancer detection

Cancer is often detected at late-stage (Stages III and IV) after symptoms have appeared, resulting in a poor prognosis for patients. Earlier detection of cancer increases treatment options, improves patient outcomes and increases 5-year survival rates.

Existing diagnostic tests can suffer from high false positives and/or insufficient sensitivity for early-stage cancer (stages 1 and II). Additionally, there is often poor screening participation due to existing tests being invasive, inconvenient, inaccessible, or expensive. There is a clear unmet need for non-invasive, accurate and reliable tests for earlier detection of cancer.

5-year survival rates by stage at diagnosis

Exosomes have huge potential as novel biomarkers for multiple diseases and applications

Exosomes are small extracellular vesicles (EVs) released by all cells. They are nanometre-sized lipid membrane packages that encapsulate (and protect from degradation) DNA, RNAs and proteins. EVs and the messages they carry form part of the cell-to-cell communicatione system and play an important role in health and disease. Intercepting and reading EV messages has important applications in the research, diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, including: cancer, cardiometabolic, inflammatory, neurodegenerative and other diseases.

Clinical interest in exosomes has grown exponentially due to their commercial potential in drug delivery, disease diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Advancements in exosome research have been limited by slow, impure and inefficient traditional methods to isolate exosomes. There is an unmet need for fast, precise and scalable isolation of exosomes for research and commercial applications.

INOVIQ has developed a rapid and efficient way (EXO-NET) to isolate EVs from biofluids to intercept and decode the messages that they contain. This information can be used for assessing patient well-being or disease risk, diagnosis of disease, selecting the best treatment option, or monitoring a patient’s response to treatment.