DotLab is increasing its enrollment efforts for the early access program for DotEndo, a noninvasive test for endometriosis, to involve more physicians in the United States.
The company made the announcement at the recent 2018 American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Scientific Congress & Expo in Denver, where physicians were invited to DotLab’s booth for a product demonstration and to register for the program.
DotEndo is a saliva test now being offered at various fertility clinics across the U.S. as part of an early access program. The test is an alternative to laparoscopic surgery, which is an invasive technique commonly used to diagnose endometriosis.
With DotEndo, women will have the first-ever non-invasive option, which can detect disease-specific biomarkers that indicate active endometriosis using saliva samples.
Endometriosis is a condition caused by the growth of womb cells in other places in the pelvic region, which leads to inflammation and potentially scarring of the tissue. Symptoms of this condition vary, and some women may never experience any issues at all. In extreme cases, it may lead to infertility.
“Approximately half of women undergoing IVF [in vitro fertilization] have endometriosis. If the disease is diagnosed and treated prior to IVF, women could have a better chance of getting pregnant,” Heather Bowerman, founder and CEO of DotLab, said in a press release.
In preclinical studies, researchers have been able to detect endometriosis biomarkers using DotEndo technology and assess endometriosis progression comparable to the gold standard technique of laparoscopy. Many retrospective and prospective studies have evaluated the efficiency of DotEndo to detect specific biomarkers, according to the release.
DotLab recently announced the launch of a program evaluating the ability of DotEndo to monitor disease progression and 48-week treatment response in women diagnosed through laparoscopy.
Hugh Taylor, MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale School of Medicine and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital, was instrumental in the discovery and development of DotEndo. A paper describing DotEndo’s performance data, a prospective study supervised by Taylor, won the Endometriosis SIG Prize Paper award at the 2017 ASRM meeting.
An annual education and research meeting to discuss the breakthroughs and unmet needs in the field of reproductive medicine, the ASRM conference was held this year from Oct. 6-10.