Vinnova grants 3.9 MSEK for the development of skin cancer detection

The Integrated Circuits and Systems research group, which is part of the Integrated Devices and Circuits department at KTH, has been granted 3.9 MSEK for the development of a miniaturized skin cancer diagnose device based on bio-impedance measurements. The industrial project's partner is Scibase AB (SCIB), a Medtec company based in Stockholm which specializes in the development of malignant melanoma diagnose instruments.

Melanoma is one of the fastest growing cancers around the world. In Sweden, it is the fastest growing form of cancer. In the US, there is one in 24 lifetime risk of contracting melanoma. Early diagnose is crucial since survival rates drops to below 50% if a melanoma is not detected and treated at an early stage.

The 2-year project is under the Strategic Innovation Program “Smarter Electronic Systems” (Strategiska innovationsprogrammet Smartare Elektroniksystem). This call received 44 project applications which together searched for 86.9 MSEK while the total available funding for the program was 24 MSEK.

Vinnova's main reason for granting this project is: 

This project contributes greatly to strengthen both the competitiveness of Scibase and also the key field of medical embedded systems. The project obtained specially good marks for the main criteria Potential and Feasibility.

- This project offers the fantastic opportunity of merging a leading Swedish company with breakthrough medical instrumentation technology and a leading research group in Microelectronics. We strongly believe that the synergy between these actors has the potential to provide results that are clinically important for society by dramatically improving the way in which skin cancer detection is done, says Dr. Saul Rodriguez who is Principal Investigator (PI) in this project.