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Applying the Cytyc Formula to Breast Cancer

With its acquisition of Pro-Duct Health, Cytyc is hoping to transfer its very successful performance with the ThinPrep Pap Test to the field of ductal lavage for breast cancer risk assessment. Cytyc is paying $167.5 million for Pro-Duct, which has sales of less than $1 million. But Cytyc believes ductal lavage represents a multi-billion dollar opportunity with no direct competition. Physicians are excited about the procedure--although they caution a lot of data needs to be compiled to determine the utility of information provided by ductal lavage.

With the recently announced purchase of Pro-Duct Health Inc. , Cytyc Corp. hopes to bring its well-honed expertise at building markets to breast cancer risk assessment, and to leverage the capabilities of its core ThinPrep liquid cytology technology [See Deal]. In the five years since it got FDA approval for ThinPrep, the company has paved the way for its technology to replace the conventional Pap smear, the gold standard in cervical cancer screening. ThinPrep is now used in 50% of all cervical cancer screening procedures in the US, allowing Cytyc to grow rapidly from a miniscule start-up to a corporation with annual revenues of more than $200 million.

Clearly, Cytyc is hoping for a repeat performance with ductal lavage, Pro-Duct's core technology. Sometimes referred to as a Pap...

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