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Water Tower Hour Recap: CEO Nicole Sandford Discusses Aspira's Diagnostic Tests

CEO and Director Nicole Sandford joined us on the Water Tower Hour to discuss Aspira’s suite of non-invasive tests to aid in the diagnosis of gynecologic diseases. Those interested can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on our website. Sandford talked about her experience at Aspira, which began as an investor in 2019. She was asked to join the board and became CEO in 2022. Sandford was very impressed with Aspira’s simple blood test for risk assessment of ovarian cancer. OvaWatch® and Ova1Plus® are offered to clinicians as OvaSuiteSM. Together, they provide the only comprehensive portfolio of blood tests to aid in the detection of ovarian cancer for the 1.2+ million American women diagnosed with an adnexal mass each year. OvaWatch provides a negative predictive value of 99% and is used to assess ovarian cancer risk for women where initial clinical assessment indicates the mass is indeterminate or benign, and thus surgery may be premature or unnecessary. Ova1Plus is a reflex process of two FDA-cleared tests, Ova1® and Overa®, to assess the risk of ovarian malignancy in women planned for surgery. Sandford said decision making based on “facts not fear” is very important to providing the best clinical care of women with adnexal masses. The Biden administration recently announced a women’s health initiative that resulted in about $100 million being allocated to women’s health research. Sandford talked about how Aspira’s technology can transform women’s gynecologic health. Many gynecologic diseases have similar symptoms, making accurate diagnosis very challenging. The company’s technology uses AI-powered algorithms to identify gynecologic diseases using a simple blood test. There is currently only one major alternative, a single biomarker blood test called CA-125, which was developed in the 1970s. It does not accurately predict malignancy for adnexal masses in initial diseases, but it is the only FDA-cleared test to be used for recurrence monitoring, not initial assessment. Aspira has the only commercially available test that provides accurate results, and its pipeline has test enhancements that should offer further improvements. Sandford discussed some of the challenges Aspira faced when it launched OvaWatch back in 2022, including driving a diagnostic tool into the market that clinicians were not familiar with. However, once they began to realize what information the test could provide and how they could use it to improve patient outcomes, usage went up significantly. More than 200,000 OvaSuite tests have been run at this point, a milestone that Aspira hit earlier this year. Sandford talked about the importance of creating an environment where people are comfortable coming forward with both ideas and problems. It is important to work as a team because teams are much more likely to develop solutions. Lastly, Sandford was asked about the chief drivers of maintaining Aspira’s competitive advantage. She said that scanning the landscape for new technology is very important. Aspira is always looking for partners—commercial, scientific, or development. She also mentioned Aspira has a new gynecologic test in development, a non-invasive test for endometriosis, which will be the subject of a future discussion.