Cancer diagnostics company Mercy Bioanalytics won the Disruptive Technology Award Competition for its blood-based cancer screening technology at the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine's (ADLM) annual meeting in Chicago on July 30.
The firm won for its Mercy Halo Ovarian Cancer Screening Test. Mercy Bioanalytics designed its liquid biopsy platform to detect stage I cancer by using biomarker colocalization to analyze blood-based extracellular vesicles (EVs) that carry unique cancer signatures from their parent cells.
The Waltham, MA-based company said in a statement that its EV-based approach to early cancer detection allows for the development of low-cost screening tests with high sensitivity and high specificity that will be accessible to more patients.
The ovarian cancer test received breakthrough device designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in late May, and the company said that it plans to apply to the FDA for premarket approval in the first half of 2026.
Other contestants for the ADLM Disruptive Technology Award were Dionysus Digital Health, for its Enlighten Test, an artificial intelligence-driven epigenetic test taken during pregnancy that predicts future postpartum depression risk; and Vitestro, for its autonomous blood-drawing device.
Mercy was also recognized at ADLM with a Distinguished Abstract Award for its abstract entitled "Analytical and Clinical Performance of a Novel Ovarian Cancer Screening Test in Asymptomatic Women." The abstract was selected for a podium presentation as part of the Distinguished Abstracts session on Tuesday, July 30.
