Color me clairvoyant, but I suspected this - or something like it - was around the corner for small cap biotech company BioCurex (BOCX). Like I said in my Top Ten Predictions for 2008 edition, the company’s deafening silence was the tip-off that something big was brewing…they have a real hot and cold streak going with publicity effort. This morning we learned that the rumor of a new RECAF licensee wasn’t just a rumor.

Inverness Medical Innovations (IMA) is RECAF’s newest front man. They’ll be joining Abbott Labs (ABT) as a licensee, and in some ways competing with them. The Inverness deal will let them market all uses of the RECAF technology…the ones very close to being ready, and the ones not even close to being ready. (As a reminder, the ‘quick-test’ cancer screener has already been proto-typed, and is undergoing some final tweaking.)

More importantly, the agreement will not only mean royalty payments once sales start, but some up-front fees and R&D milestone payments are part of the deal too. No word on how much, but any revenue at all would be big for BioCurex - which doesn’t have a revenue-bearing product just yet.

Though I don’t this as an immediate game-changer, the rest of the market does. The stock is up 15% today. I also have to think the 41% improvement on December’s lows of 53 cents is also related to today’s news….just a little preemptively.

In the long run - and assuming RECAF does actually make it to commercialization in some form - this is huge for BioCurex and its shareholders.

Here’s the press release.