HDC partners with New York surgery center to develop new molecular diagnostic tests for pancreatic cancer

Feb 6 2010

Health Discovery Corporation (OTCBB: HDVY) announced today that the Company has entered into an exclusive agreement with the Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center of New York at Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers in New York City to develop new molecular diagnostic tests for the early detection of pancreatic cancer. The Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center is under the leadership of Drs. Michael Wayne, Franklin Kassim and Avram Cooperman.

“We are very excited to partner with Drs. Wayne, Kassim and Cooperman and their colleagues, all experts in pancreatic cancer, to work together in the development of new molecular diagnostic tests for the early detection of pancreatic cancer”

Under the terms of the agreement, the Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center will provide all specimens from their collected specimen banks, specimens on all new patients and all associated clinical and outcomes data. The specimens will include tissue, blood and urine. Health Discovery Corporation (HDC) will use its patent protected SVM-based discovery technology and expert science team to develop these new molecular diagnostic tests for pancreatic cancer in a similar fashion to the urine-based prostate cancer test developed by HDC and licensed for development and commercialization to Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) and Abbott (NYSE: ABT) on a royalty-based, world-wide co-exclusive basis.

Health Discovery Corporation will own all of the intellectual property and commercialization rights to these newly discovered molecular diagnostic tests for pancreatic cancer and HDC intends to immediately partner with a large clinical laboratory for development, marketing and commercialization of these tests.

“We are very excited to partner with Drs. Wayne, Kassim and Cooperman and their colleagues, all experts in pancreatic cancer, to work together in the development of new molecular diagnostic tests for the early detection of pancreatic cancer,” said Stephen D. Barnhill, M.D., Chairman and CEO of Health Discovery Corporation. "The specimen bank established by these doctors provides a rare opportunity to accomplish this vital goal.”

“A century of treating pancreatic cancer leaves much to be humble about. I believe that working with Dr. Barnhill, his expert scientific team and the proven SVM technology at Health Discovery Corporation, we have a unique opportunity to develop a new molecular diagnostic test to identify pancreatic cancer at a pre-clinical stage early enough to be treated more effectively than is current practice on today’s patients," said Dr. Cooperman, Surgical Director at the Pancreas, Biliary and Liver Surgery Center.

“With 1 in 72 men and women diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas during their lifetime and an overall 5-year survival rate of only 5.5%, there is a great need for a new molecular diagnostic screening test for early detection of this devastating disease,” said Dr. Cooperman.