Spin­-out company moving to transform breast screening

University of Canterbury spin­-out company moving to transform breast cancer screening

March 9, 2015

A University of Canterbury spin-out company Tiro Lifesciences is moving to transform breast cancer diagnosis and screening for all women.

The company, which has raised $600,000 capital, has developed a zero radiation breast cancer screening system with no restriction on age limits.

Each year more than 570,000 New Zealanders take part in breast screening programmes to detect cancer. New Zealand has among the highest rates of breast cancer in the world. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in New Zealand women, and the second most common cause of cancer death in women, with over 2700 women diagnosed with breast cancer and over 600 women dying from breast cancer each year.

The Christchurch-based company is working on commercially developing a breast cancer system by making sure it integrates into clinical workflow. Chief executive Marcus Haggers says their work has focused on reducing screening time and has made significant progress in the last six months.

Around 40 percent of women currently screened have breast dense breast tissue. Women with this tissue have an increased risk of breast cancer but are also the group most difficult to screen via X-ray mammography.

“X-ray mammography is utilised for breast cancer screening in women over 45 years of age. The limitation of X-ray mammography in dense breast screening is that healthy dense tissue has virtually the same X-ray absorption characteristics as cancerous tissue, making it difficult or impossible to spot certain cancer cases on a mammogram image.

“The recognition of this problem has led to new laws being introduced in the United States, the largest medical device market in the world.

“Legally, patients must be informed of mammography’s limitations and alternative tests suggested.

Tiro Lifesciences is developing a new era of breast cancer screening. The system does not rely on absorption of X-rays (or any other radiation source) and is therefore free of the issues affecting X-ray mammography in dense breast cases. We carried out a small clinical study last year which has improved the system in preparation for a larger clinical trial later this year.”

The medical diagnostic company last year received the first repayable grant of $450,000 from Callaghan Innovation under its expanded business incubator network. The University of Canterbury is a shareholder in Tiro Lifesciences, as is Geoff Chase, a distinguished professor at the University of Canterbury, whose team of researchers has developed the technology.

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