Tiresias: Breast Cancer; The Time has come

"Resolve to solve your past and then soar."

Christine E. Szymanski

My friends,

Tiresias cannot but note that, of late, Optiscan share price has been in a bit of a holding pattern. A pause that refreshes? A reassessment? A new re-evaluation? Tiresias thinks perhaps at last a breakout, at least in understanding of what Optiscan’s digital, real-time, in-vivo, 3D, histopathology and telepathology really means.

There has not been a flood of announcements from our company. Last week’s announcement of the completion of an ex-vivo digital pathology of breast cancer study was welcome. Tiresias is pleased and awaits results with interest and patience. Tiresias however has no doubts about what the results will be, no doubt at all as to what it will show. The study will show that Optiscan Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (CLE) can easily and reliably see cancer cells, in real time, in breast tissue excised at breast cancer surgery. That is simple, that is certain, and that is obvious. A breast cancer study proving again the concept that long-term holders of Optiscan have known and understood. What is also obvious to Tiresias is that Optiscan, breast cancer surgeons, and breast cancer pathologists, for reasons that puzzle Tiresias, have been slow in realizing or at least implementing this. Tiresias has no doubt that that this is the key next advance in breast cancer surgery - cancer edge detection and detection of residual cancer cells after excision. Many breast surgeons have rightly given up on the current “state of the art”, which is 120 years old – frozen section biopsy. They are now operating using “dead reckoning”! Truly. And is it surprising that residual cancer and re-operation rate is now so high.

Although Tiresias is patient, he has his limits. Wake up ye breast surgeons. Wake up pathologists. Be honest with your patients. And Optiscan: get on with it. What are we waiting for? This is obvious. It seems to Tiresias that the only way to move this quickly is to mobilize the patients and patient groups. So, OIL, mobilize now! “It’s Time”.