BioCentury
ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Nanocytomics: Seeing tiny changes

Nanocytomics using imaging to non-invasively identify risk of cancer

February 6, 2012 8:00 AM UTC

Lung cancer is one of the deadliest cancers in the U.S. in part because it is often diagnosed too late to be treatable. Nanocytomics LLC thinks its high-resolution imaging technology can cheaply and non-invasively identify patients at high risk of developing lung and other cancers. The company hopes its tests will become standard of care in asymptomatic subjects, akin to Pap smears for cervical cancer.

The company uses partial wave spectroscopy (PWS) microscopy, an optical technique developed by co-founder and CEO Vadim Backman at Northwestern University, where he is a professor in the department of biomedical engineering...