In recent years, the treatment for breast cancer has gradually advanced. Despite the advancements, there is a persistent gap in the care continuum and nurturing of the patient. Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Cormier-May, Mammogen’s CEO, is empowering and serving the patient community by filling the gap between science and support.
At an early age, Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Cormier-May discovered her passion for improving women’s healthcare. Her career started as a medicinal chemist specializing in the early diagnosis of cancer at the Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research. But she wanted to do more for and feel closer to patients, so she left the lab to make a difference in the continuum of care. In the past two decades, Liz has purposefully dedicated her life to improving education, treatment, and care for patients. She has established new markets, products, and companies, all with the aim to introduce unique options and technology, which not only improve patient experiences but also save lives. Liz believes that the key to unlocking true precision medicine lies at the intersection of diagnostics, life sciences, technology, therapeutics, and advocacy.
In 2021, Liz started with Mammogen, a female-led biotech company that combined data, technology, science, and personal experience to challenge the status quo. Mammogen focuses on women’s health diagnostics, backed by innovative technology. The team at Mammogen is on a mission to empower and serve the patient community and close the gap between science and support. It is constantly working to create both clinical and social tools to address issues like fear, anxiety, depression, marital challenges, and body shame issues that affect the patient equally. With Mammogen, Liz is forming a strong new community with the power to make a real difference.
Liz leads Mammogen with a mission to shatter complacency and radically improve the way women’s diseases are detected, diagnosed, and treated. The team has never wavered from its mission and is continually striving to fill the gaps in the current continuum of care for women, their families, and their loved ones.
Mammogen operates within the IV BioHoldings ecosystem founded by her partner, Martin Keiser III. IVBH conceives, creates, and develops first-in-category bio-platform companies that radically improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. IVBH is a novel, distributed platform that encompasses speed, efficiency, and risk management from R&D to company creation to production to commercialization. It integrates advanced data science, exponential technologies, powerful partnerships, and 60 years of combined multi-disciplinary expertise together, which has ranked it among the leading companies of the year.
Mammogen’s technology is focused on developing and commercializing multi-gene expression signatures found in the RNA – a polymeric molecule that plays an essential role in the coding, decoding, regulation, and expression of genes. These biomarkers are found in almost all bio-fluids, including blood and saliva, which deliver important information about a patient’s response to disease. Understanding these signatures and tracking the changes in RNA can detect and decode complex diseases like cancer much sooner.
“The industry has been very successful using DNA-based technology to detect later-stage disease and make important patient care decisions post-diagnosis. Early detection, however, has eluded DNA tests, and for very good reason,” explains Liz. She adds, “To detect DNA derived from a tumor, that tumor has to live, disrupt, and then die before the technology can give us information about the disease. Consequently, it makes early detection improbable. RNA, however, offers real-time information about the patient’s biological response to disease, unlocking stage 1 detection.”
Mammogen’s multi-gene expression test is non-invasive and painless. It is positioned to unlock regular, reliable screening for women that are underserved by current medical guidelines. Mammogen’s technology has the potential to eliminate false negatives and false positives while enabling the safe monitoring of suspicious nodules. Mammogen’s flagship offering, the genTRUTM diagnostic suite, comprises two early detection tests based on 26 mRNA biomarkers.
The genTRUTM suite of products offers best-in-class performance. The team is currently focused on clinical development and speeding the solution towards commercialization so that early breast cancer detection is a reality for the 96 million women who would be appropriate for these tests.
Mammogen is a female-led community with every team member believing and focusing on a cause larger than themselves. This mission inspires commitment and induces innovative thinking and problem-solving capabilities. “Nothing we do at Mammogen or IV BioHoldings is traditional; everything is by design inventive,” says Liz. The team is continually striving to reinvent the traditional approach, rearrange the pieces, and push best-in-class products. The inherent ingenuity and efficiency match its team’s efforts to constantly challenge the status quo.
Mammogen thrives on advanced technology and innovation, one of the many things that makes it unique and powerful in the industry. The team is utilizing its technology and expertise to develop and commercialize the multi-gene expression profiles that they discovered in mRNA.
As aforementioned, the biomarkers are present in blood and saliva which provide important information about the body's disease processes. Understanding these signatures, and identifying changes in RNA, will enable the early detection of complex diseases like breast cancer. RNA analysis provides real-time data on the biological response to disease, unlocking stage 1 detection. Mammogen is in the early planning stages for 2-3 additional women’s health indications but it is early to officially announce them. “Like early detection of breast cancer, additional indications will be focused on areas in which there are no viable solutions for patients currently,” confirmed Liz.
Mammogen believes that diagnostics is more than the clinical tools that companies build. It has to be about truly serving the patients, and this means trying to fill all of the gaps that exist in the continuum of care, especially for breast cancer patients, when life is NEVER the same as it was the day before diagnosis. Liz and her team are forming a powerful community of survivors, fighters, and previvors.
“The ultimate aim is that all women, regardless of age, background, financial status or genetics, will have access to safe, early detection – potentially saving millions of lives.”