Early cancer diagnosis trials awarded £4 million

Researchers in Southampton will trial new technologies to help spot cancer sooner.

Almost £4 million is being invested in two new clinical trials.

They will use cutting-edge techniques to see if certain cancers can be detected earlier. This improves the likelihood of successful treatment.

Researchers from the University of Southampton (UoS) are leading the trials, in collaboration with two diagnostic companies. They are being run by the Cancer Research UK Southampton Clinical Trials Unit (SCTU).

Funding is from the Office for Life Sciences and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Improving treatment outcomes

In the UK, there are approximately 385,000 new cancer diagnoses each year.

There are three national screening programmes - targeting bowel, breast and cervical cancer. Lung health checks are also available in some areas of England.

Only three cancers can be diagnosed using a simple blood test, and screening is for one cancer at a time.

“A focus of current research into early diagnosis is looking at how detection of multiple cancers could be achieved from a single, simple patient sample, such as blood or urine,” says Dr Victoria Goss. She is the Head of Early Diagnosis and Translational Research at the SCTU.

“A reliable test such as this could have the potential to see a major shift in cancer-screening. It will make it easier and cheaper to provide on the NHS, cutting health inequalities, and ultimately reducing the number of people who die from the disease.”

Involving NHS patients

The MODERNISED study has received £1.5m of funding to find out how well a new type of multi-cancer early detection test works in the NHS. One of the sites in the trial is University Hospital Southampton.

It is being led by Prof Andy Davies, a Professor of Haematological Oncology at UoS. He is also the Director of the Cancer Research UK and NIHR Southampton Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre.

“Most current research into multi-cancer blood tests is focussed on detecting abnormal DNA that has been released into the blood stream by cancer cells,” says Prof Davies. “But this circulating tumour DNA cannot always be detected in the very early stages of cancer.”

“We are collaborating with a company called Proteotype Diagnostics Ltd. They have developed a new test that instead looks at levels of certain proteins found in blood.

“We know that even in the earliest stages of cancer, the body’s immune response can lead to higher levels of these proteins being released. We believe these may be a good way to test for early signs of the disease.”

The trial will take samples from 1,000 NHS cancer patients. A further 350 control samples will be taken from symptomatic and healthy volunteers.

Dr Emma Yates is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Proteotype Diagnostics Ltd. She said:

“Preliminary studies have already shown that our test has high levels of accuracy for picking up cancer in its very early stages.

“We are now testing it in a much larger group of people to see whether it may be a useful early diagnostic tool.”

‘Game-changing’ research

A further £2.5m has been granted to UoS’ Dr Andy Shapanis and Professor Paul Skipp.

This funding will support the development of a potentially ‘game-changing’ blood test called miONCO. It could detect up to 12 different cancers.

Previous research, supported by the charity Against Breast Cancer, studied over 20,000 blood samples taken from cancer patients. It identified a series of biological signals, or biomarkers, that can be detected in the early stages of 12 common cancers.

“Using this data, we have developed a simple blood test that can detect these signals quickly and accurately in a hospital setting,” says Dr Shapanis. He is the co-founder of a start-up company called Xgenera.

“The miONCO-Dx study will evaluate the useability, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness of this test in 8,000 patient blood samples. We hope we can make early diagnosis cheaper, faster and more scalable within the NHS in the future.

“If the test is shown to be successful in the early diagnosis of the 12 cancers we have identified biomarkers for, it could be expanded to look at over 50 other cancers in the future.”

Reducing inequalities

Both studies have the potential to reduce health inequalities. They will do this by making early cancer diagnosis more accessible.

“We know there are certain communities and groups of people within the UK who have poorer access to healthcare services”, says Dr Goss. “They are therefore more at risk of late diagnosis and less successful treatment outcomes.”

“If found to be successful, both these new tests could ultimately be carried out at GP surgeries or in community healthcare settings. This would mean more equitable early diagnosis provision in the future.”

Professor Mike Lewis, Scientific Director for Innovation at the NIHR, said:

“Developing early diagnosis technologies that are closer to cancer patients is a key aim of this NIHR funding. The potential to find cancers earlier will give patients more choice of treatment and enable us to save lives in the future.”

The MODERNISED study is sponsored by University Hospital Southampton. miONCO-Dx is sponsored by the University of Southampton.