This test is a very early result of Califano's team's work. It is a long way from being an FDA approved test, and the work has to be duplicated in other institutions. More important, a test that is less than 50% effective at finding disease isn't very good by comparisons to other tests we commonly think of. It is far more likely that the saliva diagnostic test which was developed by OCF board member Dr. David Wong at UCLA, will become commercialized sooner than this swish test (if this one ever is). It has been replicated at 4 institutions, and not only has been shown to find oral cancers (of any origin) but will also find things like diabetes, breast cancer, and possibly next, early Alzheimer's in people. It already has some giant pharma/diagnostics companies looking at it to take to market.

The UCLA team are mapping the RNA and associated proteins for other diseases even as we speak to add to the assay the test can do. The NIH is very hot on the technology, and has spent about 60 million dollars in research on it so far. The test out of JH has a huge down side, and that is that the cost of analyzing the saliva solution is VERY expensive, making it perhaps prohibitive as a commercial product. On the other hand the salivary diagnostic test at UCLA is analyzed by a simple preprogrammed computer chip, that looks for certain biomarker factors in the saliva and is very inexpensive to do, making it an ideal mass screening tool, that anyone, not even a doctor, can administer. OCF has been a financial research supporter to the Wong idea early in the process, and we have been posting in the news section about the developments of the work for almost 5 years. (Search the news section for articles that have the words Wong, or UCLA in them.)

The technology of the swish test is interesting, but does not use any really new technique. More than that, things like this are developed all the time - the proof is if a big company with the financial resources to do so, will become interested enough to spend the millions to bring it to market and commercialize the idea. JH's test will likely never get over that particular obstacle.

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Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.