Octava: The Minimally Invasive Breast Cancer Detector

What if detecting breast cancer was as simple as getting your blood drawn by the doctor? With a new test, it could be. The Octava Blood Test for breast cancer is the newest way women can find out if they have breast cancer. It detects breast cancer-specific autoantibodies from the blood sample and, because it does not rely on x-ray imaging, it is often more accurate than a traditional mammogram, especially for women with dense breast tissue.

With anxieties over false positive or false negative mammogram results escalating, Octava is becoming a popular addition to the breast cancer detection family. Octava Blue has already been approved in Europe and Israel and is in the process of being submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval for the US market. If Octava passes the tests of institutions like the FDA, it could revolutionize the way we perceive breast cancer detection.

What Is Octava?

Advertised as the “first in a new class of rapid, accurate and cost-effective immune system-based blood tests," Octava analyzes blood samples to confirm or deny positive mammogram results (Octava Blue) or do the same for negative mammogram results (Octava Pink). But that's not all that Octava does. In addition to identifying the validity of mammogram results, Octava also gives doctors extra information on the validity of biopsy results. Despite the established accuracy of biopsies in identifying cancer, around five percent of core needle biopsies still have false negative findings. Octava's second layer of testing will significantly reduce the number of false negative biopsies.

Because all Octava needs is a small blood sample, it is one of the least invasive methods for breast cancer detection on the market. At the same time, it is also one of the most accurate. In a study of Octava's effectiveness, researchers determined that Octava correctly identified patients with breast cancer 95.2 percent of the time and correctly identified patients without breast cancer 49.5 percent of the time. Traditional mammograms miss 30 percent of breast cancers in women with dense breast tissue, said Dr. Marvin Rosenberg, the president of Eventus Diagnostics, the company making Octava. This second look treatment will help women with dense breasts get an accurate cancer test.

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U.S. Approval

Currently, Octava is awaiting submission to the FDA. Before its submission, however, Eventus is putting Octava through more US tests, for which they just received $2.72 million in funding. Octava Pink needs to undergo more tests before it is available on any market. For this reason, Eventus is testing Octava Pink in Turkey and Israel in preparation for those markets.

So, when can you expect Octava Pink or Blue to hit US markets? Eventus is planning on submitting their test for US approval to the FDA this year. However, the standard approval process for the FDA is more than 10 months, so we might not see Octava on the market for some time.

For more information on Octava, visit their website.

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