BioCheetah Pte. Ltd. and Nippon Kayaku Co. Ltd. announced that the two companies have entered into an exclusive licensing and commercialization agreement to develop and market a novel urinary biomarkers-based bladder cancer diagnostic assay kit, VECanDx ELISA in Japan.

Under the agreement, BioCheetah will grant Nippon Kayaku the exclusive rights to develop and market the Product in Japan. BioCheetah will continue to complete clinical trials in Singapore, France and China, while Nippon Kayaku will be responsible for clinical trials, regulatory application, distribution and sales of the Product in Japan. Bio Cheetah will receive upfront and milestone payments from Nippon Kayaku upon signing of the agreement and commercialization of the Product in Japan.

Bladder cancer is the tenth most common cancer worldwide. Blood in the urine (hematuria) is one of the symptoms. The current gold standard in bladder cancer diagnosis is cystoscopy. Cystoscopy is an invasive diagnostic procedure that requires anesthesia and with numerous side-effects.

Survival is greatly dependent upon the stage at which the cancer has been diagnosed. BioCheetah intends to fill the unmet diagnostic gap by providing non-invasive diagnostic tests that are specific and sensitive towards bladder cancer detection. VECanDx ELISA is a proprietary non-invasive urine test for adults with hematuria or a history of bladder cancer developed by BioCheetah.

It is an ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay)-based assay that measures the protein expression levels of five novel biomarkers by proprietary detection antibodies. The measurements are then analyzed by a proprietary software into a single risk score to detect the presence or absence of bladder cancer.