By Allan Maurer

DURHAM, NC – Oncoscope, which recently closed a $1.5 million financing, has developed a diagnostic technology that makes it easier for doctors to discover esophageal cancer–one of the deadliest forms of the disease–early enough to save lives.

The company is already working on a B round of financing targeted at $14 million it hopes to close this year to support launching its product in 2012 as well as further product development.

Oncoscope was founded in June, 2006 to develop clinical applications of discoveries in the field of optical imaging pioneered by Dr. Adam Wax at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of Duke University.The company raised a $2 million A round and is backed by NC Idea and Southeast TechInventures. It also received a number of SBIR grants, including on for $1 million last year.

Esophageal cancer results in a 96 percent mortality rate because by the time symptoms appear, it’s too late to do anything about it. Compare that to colon cancer, which has only a 33 percent mortality rate, largely due to effective methods for detecting precancerous conditions via a colonoscopy.

Currently, no similarly effective early screening diagnostic test exists for deadly esophageal cancer.

Oncoscope CEO Perry Genova tells us the company’s technology analyzes light scattered onto tissue to determine the diameter of an object reflecting the light. In esophageal cancer, an enlarged cell nucleus is associated with a pre-cancerous state “100 percent of the time,” says Genova.

Unlike precancerous polyps in the colon, however, the changes lie beneath the surface in the esophagus and cannot be visually detected with endoscopic examinations.

The Onconscope could replace current methods of taking random biopcies of esophageal tissue–which is invasive and ineffective. “They take little bites out of tissue with a device like an alligator clip. They sample only 1 percent to 5 percent of the tissue, so the odds (of finding precancerous tissue) are pretty low,” says Genova.

The most common cause of esophageal cancer is reflux disease (heartburn), which most people treat only with over-the-counter drugs. Over time, it can cause precancerous cellular changes to esophageal tissue.

An estimated 16,470 adults (12,940 men and 3,530 women) in the United States were diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2009.

About 14,500 people died from the disease last year. Esophageal cancer is the seventh most common cause of cancer death among men.

The Oncoscope provides a greatly increased chance of detecting precancerous esophageal changes early enough to treat the disease more successfully.

It can also save healthcare costs, since taking tissue samples and performing biopsies is the most expensive part of current diagnostic methods. Genova says it could reduce the current average pathology costs of about $1,800 by half to $900. “That’s a dramatic improvement while at the same time you’re increasing your chance of finding something,” says Genova.

While initially focused on the esophageal space, the company’s technology can also prove useful for diagnosis of disease in the epithelial tissues of the oral cavity, stomach, colon, lung, cervix and bladder.