epiCervix-HPV Combo

Enhance cervical health monitoring with epiCervix, integrating HPV testing and next-generation DNA methylation-based cancer detection for a comprehensive cervical health assessment

epiCervix detects presence of cancer DNA in cervical samples, which provides a highly accurate count in four different genes of the number of methylated and unmethylated copies. These genes are methylated in cervical cancer and are unmethylated in non-cancer cervical samples. While Pap smear has traditionally focused on identifying abnormal cells in the cervix, our test increases the sensitivity by molecular detection of cancer DNA. We showed that this test could detect cancer DNA in early premalignant lesions. We are advancing our capabilities by incorporating next-generation sequencing based human papillomavirus (HPV) testing in cervical biopsies. This HPV assay advantage over other PCR-based HPV tests is that the test provides specific HPV strain information. The epiCervix cancer detection test was validated in studies performed at the Department of Oncology at McGill University and the results were published in the International Journal of Cancer.