BioView and ScreenCell Announce Worldwide Commercial Collaboration Agreement for Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) Technology

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Jul 09, 2012, 08:30 ET

REHOVOT, Israel and PARIS, July 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

BioView Ltd. (TASE: BIOV) and ScreenCell, a privately-held company, today jointly announced the signing of a commercial collaboration agreement for Bioview's Automated Cell Imaging Systems for imaging of CTC's isolated with ScreenCell's Cyto Kit ®.

Dr. Alan Schwebel, President and CEO of BioView, views this agreement as a unique combination of two innovative technologies, one designed by ScreenCell to isolate rare cells of potentially significant prognostic and predictive value in cancer, and another, BioView's scanning platform, which provides automated imaging and analysis solutions for rare cell and circulating tumor cell detection. "BioView's unique automated imaging and analysis solutions for the detection and of rare cells greatly enhance research and clinical laboratory productivity and assay development process. We are proud to be ScreenCell's global partner and look forward to expanding our relationship."

Bioview's Imaging Systems are designed to accommodate both the need for CTC enumeration and retrieval of cellular and marker characteristics of captured cells. Utilizing field-proven algorithms developed and perfected in collaboration with leading cancer research centers worldwide, BioView's scanning platform is the ideal solution for both clinical and research laboratories wishing to enhance their productivity and assay development processes.

ScreenCell offers innovative, single-use devices to isolate by size and characterize a wide variety of tumor cells, both live and fixed, including mesenchymal cells, cancer stem cells, microembolii and cancer cells of non-epithelial origin. These cells, which are considered to be important in metastasis, are often not captured or cannot be sensitively detected through existing technologies that only target cells expressing EpCam, a transmembrane glycoprotein on epithelial cells. With the ScreenCell devices, collected cells are also well preserved morphologically and can be isolated and grown in culture for drug screening or further genomics analysis.

"Our goal in designing ScreenCell technologies was to create a universal system, not limited to detection of cells of non-epithelial origin and free of any bias potentially linked to the use of antibodies for cell capture," stated David Znaty, Chief Executive Officer of ScreenCell. "Our objective is to support a breakthrough in personalized medicine by creating a non-invasive evaluation of specific therapeutic targets and 'real time' monitoring of target evolution which we strongly believe will be facilitated by combining ScreenCell and BioView technologies."

About BioView Ltd.

Established in 2000, and led by an expert team of biologists, software engineers and physicists, BioView develops, manufactures and supplies cell imaging equipment, biological kits and software to medical institutes and universities. BioView is a publicly traded company on the Israeli Stock exchange, and currently has strategic collaborations underway with international scientific leaders and institutions. For more information about the BioView technology, and press related issues, please contact [email protected] or visit our website at http://www.bioview.co.il.

About ScreenCell

ScreenCell was founded with the objective of designing and producing a simple but revolutionary technique allowing the fast and effective filtering of Rare Circulating Cells yielding high-quality CTC population amenable to better cellular and molecular characterization.

ScreenCell designed a full range of point of care devices for development for use in in vitro Diagnostics (IVD) assays and platforms.

ScreenCell is dedicated to creating technologies allowing CTCs to become potential end points in future oncology therapeutic arsenals by filtering out healthy live tumor cells, thus enabling: