Arbor Vita Corporation, a biotechnology company, has announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Arbor Vita approximately $900,000 to develop and Commercialize an in vitro diagnostic test for cervical pre-cancer and cancer. The phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant will fund the company's test based on detection of the HPV-E6 oncoprotein. The E6 protein has been identified as a cancer specific marker produced by HPV that is associated with progression to cancer.

"HPV-E6 has long been recognized as a protein responsible for the progression of cervical lesions to cervical cancer," stated Peter Lu, Arbor Vita founder, president, and CEO. "Until very recently, there has not been a reliable method to specifically detect this important marker. We are eager to use this phase II SBIR award to advance our proprietary technology to a commercial platform."

The two-year grant will fund Arbor Vita's research to apply its proprietary proteomics platform to develop a sensitive test for the detection of precancerous cervical lesions using E6, a protein marker associated with cervical cancer. HPV infection is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases with an estimated 5.5 million new infections per year in the US alone. For many years the standard for cervical cancer screening has been the Pap smear, which has both high false positive and false negative rates. A newer test uses DNA to detect HPV infection, but most HPV infections do not progress to cancer. The E6 oncoprotein promises to be a highly positive predictive marker for women at risk to develop cervical pre-cancerous lesions or cervical cancer.