Four newly funded teams have been formed to develop cancer early detection approaches at a sandpit-style workshop held last year. The aim of the workshop was to stimulate novel and innovative approaches to triaging primary care patients who may be at risk of receiving a cancer diagnosis.
The event united the cancer research community with researchers from outside biomedicine such as computational and data scientists, engineers, chemists and physicists. Over the course of the workshop, participants teamed up to develop pilot study proposals which they then pitched to receive funding for.
Four of these multidisciplinary teams were successful and will each receive up to £230,000 seed-funding to conduct feasibility work. They include:
Samplecam
Elena Cojocaru (Royal Marsden Hospital), Sam Merriel (University of Exeter), Robert Kerrison (University of Surrey), Gerard Cummins (University of Birmingham), Heba Sailem (University of Oxford).
A multimodal electronic capsule for identification of visual and biological markers of early stage colorectal cancer.
Sens or pass
Paolo Bertoncello (Swansea University), Nicholas Turner (De Montfort University), Sam Merriel (University of Exeter), Paul Yousefi (University of Bristol), Zahraa Abdallah (University of Bristol), Stephen Mcgough (Newcastle University), Russell Harris (University of Leeds).
A sensor on a toothbrush that can recognise markers of cancer in gastrointestinal and upper respiratory tracts in saliva.
Epic dive
Maria Del Pilar Acedo Nuñez (University College London), Richard Luxton (University of the West of England), Joe Geraghty (Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI), part of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust), Robert Kerrison (University of Surrey), Amanda Winter (Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust), Matthew Suderman (University of Bristol).
Early pancreatic cancer diagnosis in vivo evaluation. Aims to show that it is possible to capture and amplify ctDNA in circulating blood, thus increasing the chances of detecting ctDNA in a blood sample.
Maars
Julia Hippisley-Cox (University of Oxford), Jun Wang (Queen Mary, University of London), Konstantin Nikolic (University of West London), Tingting Zhu (University of Oxford), Robert Kerrison (University of Surrey), Joe Geraghty (Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI), part of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust).
Multimodal active adaptive risk stratification for gastrointestinal cancer.