Many of the tests available to diagnose colorectal cancer don't catch the disease soon enough and the survival rate drops rapidly if a developing cancer is not treated.
An Alberta company believe it has found a new and relatively simple test which will catch cancer at the polyp stage so that treatment can start early. The spot urine diagnostic test has undergone some of its first human trials and Metabolomic Technologies of Edmonton is confident it will proceed quickly through the rest of the regulatory approval process.
Reg Joseph is the CEO of the company and I caught up to him at BIO 2012 in Boston yesterday to talk about the science behind the test and how his company emerged from work at the University of Alberta.
Here is my conversation with him.