HAVERTOWN — A personalized medicine company is out to make a trip to the dentist more meaningful than simply a checkup for cavities and a teeth cleaning.

PeriRx has licensed and is completing the development of a non-invasive saliva test for dentists that can be used to detect and predict oral cancer — the world’s sixth most common cancer.

Stephen M. Swanick, CEO of PeriRx, said the 4-year-old Delaware County company is in discussions with several large pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSm-thKline and Johnson & Johnson, about teaming up on the distribution of its molecular diagnostic test for oral cancer and a second product targeted the early diagnosis of diabetes. [Read more…]

In this week’s print edition, I have a story about PeriRx, a Havertown, Pa., personalized medicine company that is getting ready to launch a diagnostic test dentists can use to detect oral cancer by collecting saliva samples to be analyzed for certain biomarkers. [Read more…]