NEW YORK – Proteotype Diagnostics said Wednesday that it has been awarded £1.5 million ($2.0 million) in funding from the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research and Office for Life Sciences. The grant will support clinical validation, in collaboration with the University of Southampton, of Proteotype's novel Enlighten multi-cancer early detection test.
Unlike other assays that target signal molecules released from tumors, Proteotype said that Enlighten measures the host response to tumor development, tracking changing levels of proteins that occur even in the earliest stages of cancer.
In initial results presented at this year's annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, the company reported a detection rate of 86 percent across multiple cancers, with a zero percent false-positive rate and strong signals for early-stage tumors. The firm and its collaborators now seek to expand that analysis to a larger group of patients, enabling a statistically powered calculation of performance.
The group aims to validate the test in real-world Nation Health Service settings, focusing specifically on reaching higher-risk and underserved populations. The new study, called MODERNISED, will be led by professor Andrew Davies from the University of Southampton Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and will recruit 1,350 participants across southern England, targeting cancers with high mortality rates in socioeconomically deprived areas, such as colorectal, lung, and pancreatic cancers.
Proteotype also believes its test can be developed without the requirement of expensive, specialized equipment and consumables, and with a 24-hour turnaround time. The trial will include a health economic analysis.
"Growing up in poverty in South Africa, I lost three of my closest family members to cancers detected too late, all before I turned 14," Wesley Sukdao, Proteotype's cofounder and CEO, said in a statement. "To meaningfully impact health inequalities, cutting-edge cancer diagnostics must be both affordable and accessible."