About Aprovix

Aprovix is a medical technology company with its registered office in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, Sweden. Aprovix was founded in 2001, based on an idea by Professor Erik Wilander of Uppsala. His basic idea was to offer a new health-check method to women that are not participating in organized smear test programs based on self-sampling followed by HPV tests. Professor Wilander associated with a group of researchers and business developers to transform his idea into a finished product. After several years of planning, testing and evaluation, this product was created: Qvintip®.

Business Concept

Aprovix's business concept is to supply healthcare providers with a tailored, cost-effective and reliable self sampling process combined with HPV testing for early detection of pre-stages of Cervix cancer.

Business Model

After developing the concept and process, testing and validating it for four years in Uppsala county Aprovix is now ready to offer the process, concept and self sampling device to distributors in Europe and Middle East who want to set up the process and offer it to healthcare providers in their respective markets.

Vision

Our vision is to reduce suffering and deaths caused by cervical cancer using HPV home testing.

Clinical Trials with a Positive Outcome

Aprovix started its first clinical trials on Qvintip at Uppsala University Hospital in 2006. More than 7,500 women participated in the trials in 2006‐2010, over 3,600 of them using Qvintip. The results have been published in recognized medical journals. Some results stand out.

an overall participation rate in home testing of ca 40 % among women who had declined to come to PAP smear testing at the clinic for 6 years, despite being called and reminded several times.
That HPV testing is significantly more sensitive than Pap smear testing is well established, however the weak point of HPV â€“testing has been the low specificity, which previously has raised concern that women get alarmed over false positive results. However, in one of the publications ( see list ) the research team showed that HVP testing where positive results were followed by a repeated test within 3 months has as good as specificity as PAP smear.
As an another example the results of the 2008 study are illustrative. 2,829 women who had not attended regular pap smear screening for over six years were invited to perform a Qvintip home test. 1,107 women (39%) took a test. 6.7% were HPV positive. Sixty of the HPV-positive women were followed up six months later when 74% were still HPV positive (44 women). Out of these 44 women, 19 had CIN 2‐3 lesions on the cervix (a pre-cancerous state). None of the women that were HPV negative the second time they were tested had CIN 2‐3 lesions.

Please see the list of references for further documentation of the pilot projects with Qvintip.

A New Phase

With the pilots in Sweden completed the company now enters a new phase. The complete self sampling process including sampler, IT system to manage the process, operative processes has been "packaged" and Aprovix is now ready to offer the concept as a franchise to companies in Europe and the Middle East.

A Bright Future

HPV testing and cervical cancer are attracting major interest. The Nobel Prize in 2008 and a decisions to vaccinate girls against HPV has reinforced the understanding that cervical cancer can be prevented if effective health-checks are offered. In this context, Qvintip can satisfy the needs of health authorities and individual women.

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