Startup eyes medical market
Published Monday June 28th, 2010
Health: Screening Devices Canada looking to improve thyroid checker to create first of its kind test
More than half of the 10 to 15 per cent of the American population with at least mild hypothyroidism don't know it, according to the American Thyroid Association.
The thyroid disease, most commonly caused by an autoimmune disease, itself isn't fatal but the condition's symptoms - reduced energy and ability to keep warm and slowed brain and bowel function - can threaten a person's livelihood and quality of life.
In most cases the treatment is simple, a daily pill containing a synthetic version of the thyroid hormone, which helps every cell in the body function as they are supposed to.
A New Brunswick startup is trying to make the diagnosis to treatment process faster with a rapid test, similar to a pregnancy test except it detects the hormone in blood rather than urine.
Screening Devices Canada Inc.'s ThyroChek product can test for hypothyroidism right in a doctor's office within minutes without having to send a sample to a lab.
"This is not only a cost savings for the patient and the medical system but it allows the physician to speed things up," says company founder Sharon Cunningham. "You can see the patient on the first visit and determine if there is a disease."
Now Cunningham, who purchased the intellectual property for the rapid test in 2006 from Utah-based Endocrinologist Dr. Joel Ehrenkranz, has begun the process of getting an improved version approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
She says the roughly 2,000 doctors that have used her first product - about one per cent of the 200,000 physicians that are registered to do in-office testing south of the border - like the product but wanted more.
ThyroChek tests on an over-or-under threshold for the amount of the hormone in the blood. The improved version can detect the amount of the hormone in the blood and display it numerically, which would allow doctors to test for the less common hyperthyroidism, an overactive thyroid gland as opposed to the more common underactive gland.
"We anticipate having this reader launched into the United States this fall, and being the first of its kind available," Cunningham says, adding it's dependent on FDA approval.
She hopes to capture about 30 per cent of what she says is a $1.2-billion market.
"Those doctors who drive Porsches understood that you could triage the patient, and indeed do some of this testing in their offices. In the case of the United States for every test they do in their offices they make about $25," she says. "That begins to add up."
Screening Devices Canada, which is based out of Hatfield Point, about 35 kilometres west of Sussex, relies heavily on outsourcing for product development, manufacturing, sales and distribution. But if the company, which Cunningham says is worth $3 million, expands beyond its two employees she plans to keep the marketing and customer service arms in Canada.
The firm has captured about $850,000 in investments $250,000 of which came from the Halifax-based First Angel Network, as well as matching funds from two Community Business Development Corps. and the rest from American investors.
Cunningham is now looking for $5 million in further funding. Once the numeric thyroid test is to market the firm will start working on its next testing product: a rapid prostate cancer test, a $1.6 billion market, she says.
Ross Finlay, a director for the First Angel Network says ThyroChek is a valuable product.
"There's a great spot for it in the marketplace in the U.S.," he says. "From a doctor's perspective it's a no-brainer.
"It was worth the investment and we think it has tremendous potential," he says.
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