Vantage Health Inc., and its parent company Nanobeak Inc. today announced that NASA and Nanobeak have entered into an exclusive 5-year license agreement to commercialize mobile healthcare products derived from NASA patented chemical sensing technology. This exclusive 5-year license agreement has been sublicensed to Vantage Health Inc.
Telemedicine and mobile healthcare is formed by the intersection of medicine and digital technology. Nanobeak and Vantage Health have been developing sensor based mobile applications based on patented NASA technology, for non-invasive disease screening at the earliest stages, to be implemented for point of care and individualized healthcare screening using a proprietary breathalyzer attached to a smartphone.
The initial exclusive commercialization agreement with NASA licenses the use of multiple US Patents relating to inventions in the fields of nanotechnology, chemical sensing, carbon nanotubes, medical diagnoses, environmental sensing and cell phone applications. The commercialization agreement requires that the products be manufactured substantially in the United States, and are subject to certain annual royalty payments to NASA. We will use this sensor technology to focus on certain forms of disease screening and narcotics screening. The initial application will be lung cancer.
The sensor technology won the 2012 NASA Government Invention of the Year, which was announced on April 10, 2013. The sensors have been deployed by NASA to detect trace gases in the crew cabin on the International Space Station. Other federal agencies are using sensors based on this technology to detect trace gases in various environments. Specific applications for which the innovative sensors have been tested and used include trace chemical detection in planetary exploration, air monitoring, leak detection and hazardous agent detection using cell phones.
Vantage Health is focused on early screening of lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and ovarian cancer. We are also developing mobile screening capabilities for medical adherence, heart failure, diabetes, tuberculosis, oxidative stress disorder, metabolic impairment, and HIV/Aids. Cancer is the number two cause of death in America, second only to heart disease according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization statistics indicate that 7.6 million people die from cancer a year — representing more than 20,000 deaths a day.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Jeremy Barbera, Chairman and CEO of Vantage Health, stated, “By analyzing a person’s breath print, the Vantage Health Sensor will provide low cost, non-invasive lung cancer screening for the earliest stages when there are more treatment options available for that person. There were more deaths in 2012 from lung cancer than from prostate, pancreas, breast and colon combined according to the American Cancer Society. The primary reason is that only 15% of lung cancer cases are screened at an early stage — 85% are not.”
“Our mission is to commercialize mobile healthcare technologies that provide physicians and consumers with the tools to better manage the healthcare continuum from managing illness to managing wellness.”