HAYWARD, Calif., Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ — Advanced Cell
Diagnostics, Inc. (ACD) was awarded a three-year, $3 million grant
from National Cancer Institute (NCI) under its SBIR Phase II Bridge
Award. This grant will support ACD’s continuing effort to develop
its proprietary CTCscope™ system capable of automatic
detection and molecular characterization of circulating tumor cells
(CTCs). CTCs are the rare tumor cells detached from solid tumors
and circulating in cancer patients’ blood.

“We are very grateful for the continued support from NCI. The
previous Phase I and Phase II grants have helped ACD to develop the
underlying RNAscope™ technology, which has since been
translated successfully into Research Use Only products for in
situ detection of RNA biomarkers in FFPE samples,” commented by
Dr. Yuling Luo, President & CEO of ACD.  “Given how few of
these grants are given, the award is a further validation of the
strength of our technology to uniquely fulfill a critical unmet
clinical need in cancer management.” ACD has since been featured as
one of the NCI SBIR Success Stories (http://sbir.cancer.gov/success/stories/acd/acd.asp).

In this latest grant, ACD will work with a multidisciplinary
team from four leading institutions to further advance
CTCscope™ into an automated system and conduct clinical
studies to demonstrate its clinical utility. Collaborators include
Dr. Paul Goodwin of Applied Precision, Drs. Hope Rugo and John Park
of University of California San Francisco, Prof. David Krag of
University of Vermont, and Prof. Charles Coombes of Imperial
College London.

About CTCscope™:

ACD’s CTCscope™ system is based on its proprietary in
situ RNA detection platform RNAscope™, which enables
highly sensitive and specific detection of all types of CTCs
without the need for EpCAM-based enrichment. Importantly,
CTCscopeT

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