Beyond Awareness: Improving Breast Cancer Screening with International Collaboration
Springdale, Arkansas and Auckland, New Zealand (PRWEB) October 29, 2016 -- Ascendant Dx has announced today, the launch of a campaign, together with Rialto Channel and the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation (NZBCF), during the month of October in support of its important work in development of a tear based breast cancer screening test.
October is international breast cancer awareness month. Many organizations and institutions worldwide participate in campaigns raising awareness and the need for consistent screening. The goal of the partners in the New Zealand campaign is to go beyond raising awareness by recruiting volunteers for research studies related to the development of a fast, accurate and inexpensive screening test for breast cancer.
In support of the international breast cancer awareness month, Rialto channel will host The Breast Cancer Screenings, a series of movies airing every Saturday in October at 8:30 pm local time. The movies will be selected and introduced by Rialto channel blogger Helene Ravlich, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The culmination of The Breast Cancer Screenings will be a day long cinema event on November 1st in Auckland, New Zealand. Participants will be able to register for free tickets to one of three movie showings and will be given the opportunity to donate a tear sample. The Ascendant Dx clinical team will be on hand to collect samples from the movie goers.
Samples collected from this event will be used to further research and development work on Melody® the company’s tear based diagnostic test for breast cancer, currently in development. Dr. Anna Daily, Chief Scientist with Ascendant Dx and project leader for Melody® says of the event: “There are many factors to investigate with regard to building a diagnostic test for breast cancer. Campaigns such as these allow our research and clinical teams to add a large group of samples to our sample banks. The samples collected in New Zealand gives us much needed geographic diversity.”
In a statement, Omid Moghadam, Founder and CEO of Ascendant Dx said, “I would like to thank our partners in this campaign, Rialto Channel and NZBCF for their participation and to thank the volunteers signing up for the study in advance. Our mission is to democratize breast cancer screening by providing an accurate, fast and inexpensive test and we would not be able to do it without volunteers participating in our studies.”
The concept of using tear fluid to screen for breast cancer came from Ascendant Dx’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Suzanne Klimberg. Dr. Klimberg carried out the first studies using tears as a diagnostic for breast cancer in her lab t the Rockefeller Cancer Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and has played an active role in the company since it’s founding.
Ascendant Dx has a mission to commercialize disruptive diagnostic technologies to aid in the diagnosis of diseases affecting women and children.
For more information on the event go to: http://www.rialtochannel.co.nz/whats-on/rialto-channel-presents-the-breast-cancer-screenings
For more information on Ascendant Dx go to http://www.ascendnatdx.com.
omid moghadam, Ascendant Dx, http://www.ascendantdx.com, +1 4799733911, [email protected]
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