Patients at Salford Royal (part of Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust) will be able to help a study accelerating development of a diagnostic test for the early detection of colorectal cancer.
Consultant Physician and Gastroenterologist Dr Arash Assadsangabi will lead the collection of samples from up to 250 patients via the Northern Care Alliance Research Collection (NCARC) tissue bank in order to evaluate and further develop Tagomics’ novel test in real-world samples.
Earlier this year Tagomics was awarded £860,000 funding from Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst programme for further development of the company’s multiomic Interlace™ platform, which is designed to identify subtle molecular signals of cancer using enriched epigenetic and genetic markers from a single blood sample. The hope is that earlier detection means that treatment can start earlier too, when it’s most likely to be effective.
Biomedical research
This work builds on a previous collaboration through NCARC and a partnership with Agilent Technologies which produces the SureSelect cancer panel used in the test. The NCARC tissue bank uses dedicated clinical research staff to approach patients who would like to generously provide samples to support various important biomedical research projects.
The pilot work will help evaluate how Interlace™ performs using real-world samples collected in a colorectal clinic, assessing its effectiveness for the early detection of colorectal cancer. It will explore how clinicians might use the test in practice and identify where it can deliver the greatest impact for patients.
Dr Assadsangabi said: “Catching cancer early, before it grows too large or spreads, means treatment is more likely to succeed. That’s why this research matters.
“We are exploring cutting-edge techniques - like profiling tiny fragments of DNA in the blood - to find cancer at its earliest stages, before symptoms appear.
“We will be asking patients to let us take a small additional blood sample when they visit. While it’s just a tiny amount, it could have a big impact in helping us diagnose cancer faster in the future.
“By choosing to participate, patients become partners in innovation, helping us build tests that might save lives through earlier diagnoses.”
Sensitive test
Robert Neely, Associate Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Birmingham and co-founder of Tagomics, says the technology inside the Interlace™ platform enhances biomarker discovery through a more comprehensive, multiomic approach to disease profiling, making it an accessible diagnostic tool that reflects the complexity of disease biology across diverse patient populations.
He said: “A sensitive and specific test for early cancer detection could be transformative for the health service and its patients.
“Today, around 90 percent of cancer patients in the UK are diagnosed only after symptoms appear. This is a failure of current diagnostic testing, and as a scientist developing molecular tests, I know we can do better than this. We must move towards earlier, molecular-level detection of disease before patients become symptomatic. We already have the tools to do this, but putting them into practice is a formidable challenge.”
The work builds on a previous collaboration involving samples collected from patients with suspected lung cancer at Northern Care Alliance. Dr Neely added: “They have been fantastic in coordinating sample collection, biobanking, and helping us to build links with NHS clinicians, like Arash Assadsangabi, who is supporting our colorectal cancer study. These collaborations have been essential in both developing and validating Interlace™ in real-world clinical settings.”