The patent is important to the company’s optical biopsy technology because it provides protection in the areas of tissue surveillance, characterization, diagnosis and treatment. It is said to support the company’s fundamental technology of non-invasive, low-level laser diagnosis of pre-cancerous and cancerous tissue.
Jim Hitchin, SpectraScience’s CEO, said: “This is another key patent in our expanding intellectual property portfolio that underscores our commitment at SpectraScience to develop better, more reliable cancer screening technologies.
“Accurate imaging is critical to earlier and more effective identification of normal, pre-cancerous or cancerous tissue, and this invention provides methods of making our screening devices more useful to the physician and, more importantly, to the patient.”
SpectraScience holds approximately 60 patents worldwide that have been issued or are pending on its WavSTAT Optical Biopsy and Luma cervical imaging systems that are used to diagnose tissue to determine if it is normal, pre-cancerous, or cancerous. The WavSTAT and Luma systems are currently approved by the FDA for detecting pre-cancerous and cancerous tissue in the colon and cervix, respectively, and an evaluation of the WavSTAT for detection of pre-cancers in the throat is being tested.