The biomarker work in the first post is one of several that involve salivary diagnositics funded to the tune of about 60 million dollars in research grants over the last 9 years by the NIH and the NIDCR, and which has yeilded lots of good data. The most useful one so far and probably the first to reach market will be the salivary diagnositic work mentioned in several news stories in the oral cancer in the news section of the main web site. This was done at several university research locations but the primary investgator is David Wong at UCLA. This month I am doing two TV interviews with him related to the science and the emerging technologies. Not only does it find from a drop of saliva on a computer chip reader things like SCC, but it is also capable of finding the biomarkers for diabetes, breast cancer, and more.... all in saliva. Toludine blue is a stain which has been around for decades, and is the dye that is commonly used on pathology slides to distinguish SCC in biopsy samples. Zila has for several years tried to get it through the FDA as a diagnositic tool in vitro (not on a slide of dead cells but in the living tisuues of the mouth) but hasn't been anble to get it past them. They came out with the dye as a marker in the mean time under a less sophisticated approval with lesser claims, that lets it get to market ( I believe that their real hope is that doctors will use it "off label" and outside the FDA guidelines as more than just at 510k approved marking device.) It was originally going to be marketed as a mouth rinse (acetic acid first - vinegar, and then the die under the name OraTest, but now it is marketed on a pre-soaked swap q-tip.