A Boston startup wants to help doctors detect ovarian cancer earlier and is hoping to help patients avoid invasive and unnecessary biopsies with a new test that can determine whether they are high risk or low risk for ovarian cancer.
AOA Dx Inc. is developing a diagnostic blood test for ovarian cancer and recently closed a $7 million seed round to bring its tech to the market. Co-founder Oriana Papin-Zoghbi said this diagnostic could also help detect ovarian cancer at stage one or two. Early detection of ovarian cancer leads to much higher survival rates.
"We said, can we find a way to catch this earlier? These women are going to the doctor. They're telling there's something wrong. They're being shuffled around between physicians," Papin-Zoghbi said.
This diagnostic could be a first for ovarian cancer. The American Cancer Society puts it plainly, writing that “currently there are no reliable screening tests.” Papin-Zoghbi cited the lack of funding to women’s health research as one major reason behind the lack of innovation in this area.
The company was founded in 2020 by Papin-Zoghbi, Alex Fisher and Anna Jeter. They have worked together over the course of 10 years at several women’s health companies. A few years ago, Papin-Zoghbi said the trio decided to come together and bring their own diagnostic to market as startup founders. There was just one hurdle — none of them were scientists.
“We went out and look[ed] at researchers, doctors, hospitals (to see) who is doing research in women’s health,” Papin-Zoghbi said. “There’s a statistic that says 90% of medical innovation stays in academia. That’s research that just never makes it to clinical practice. So, we went hunting there.”
The team came across the work of Uri Saragovi, a professor at McGill University. Saragovi found new markers that could be detected in a blood test that would tell providers whether a patient is at high risk or low risk for ovarian cancer.
Saragovi joined AOA Dx as chief scientific officer and helped the startup replicate his initial research. The startup partnered with a lab for its bench work and hired Prasad Gawande as vice president of R&D to oversee its work. AOA Dx has six employees.
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Papin-Zoghbi said they’ve successfully completed this tech transfer process and are now developing the product that will eventually become commercially available. She expects to complete this process and begin a clinical trial early next year.
The new funding will go toward product development, Papin-Zoghbi said, and they plan to raise a Series A to fund the upcoming clinical trial.
The seed round was led by Avestria Ventures, AlleyCorp, The Helm, RH Capital, Olive Tree Capital and Tencent.
Papin-Zoghbi said she’s proud that her startup values representation, including creating a majority-female board and finding investors that are women and located around the world.
“I myself am an immigrant to the country, as is Anna (Jeter), and so I think one of the values of the company that we are proud of is from top down, bottom up, how do we ensure that our team is truly diverse. Because we know that will lead to more successful outcomes,” Papin-Zoghbi said.
