£11m to fund new UK projects for earlier cancer diagnosis

The NIHR and the Office for Life Sciences (OLS) have funded six projects through NIHR's Invention for Innovation (i4i) and the OLS Cancer Programme. The funding is part of a wider package of new schemes that will bring the power of the UK’s life sciences sector and the NHS to bear on tackling cancer and other life threatening diseases, with better treatments and faster diagnoses.

The new i4i-funded projects include: a breath test for gastrointestinal cancers, a new multi cancer early diagnostic test, and a project using artificial intelligence (AI) to help diagnose cancer early in general practice.

The OLS Cancer Programme aims to make the UK a leading testbed for innovation in cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, allowing patients to be diagnosed earlier and offered therapies specifically designed to target their cancer. At the end of 2022, the UK Government committed £22.5m to deliver the OLS Cancer Programme. The i4i funding call forms one element of the Programme.

The newly funded projects are all focused on innovations that could increase the early detection and diagnosis of cancer and improve outcomes for patients.  Each project is aimed at:

• clinical validation - assessing that the approach does what it is intended to do in real people in a clinical setting
• evaluation - assessing whether the approach informs clinical practice in the intended way and/or has clinical impact on patient outcomes.

The call particularly welcomed proposals that aimed to directly address inequalities in stage of cancer diagnosis. 

Professor Mike Lewis, Scientific Director for Innovation at 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 OLS Cancer Programme Chair and NHS England National Clinical Director for Cancer, Professor Peter Johnson, added: "We know that if we are to improve people’s chances of overcoming cancer we need to find better ways to detect and diagnose it as early as possible. The UK Government’s Cancer Programme, delivered by OLS, is investing in a range of promising technologies to expand our research in this field.  The projects we are funding with the NIHR will accelerate the progress from the laboratory into clinical testing, to make sure the UK is exploring all the potential in our Life Sciences sector to help patients and support new inventions."

The funded projects are:

• PANACEA: PAN Alimentary Cancer Exhaled breath Analysis
  Professor George Hanna, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
  Researching the accuracy of a new breath test for multiple gastrointestinal cancers (oesophageal, gastric, pancreatic, liver and colorectal) as well as studying how to introduce it into primary care.
• CLEAREST: Clinical evaluation of lung cancer detection and diagnosis software
  Dr Carlos Arteta Montilva, Optellum 
  Studying how artificial intelligence (AI) software could help medical imaging experts to find suspicious ‘spots’ in the lungs and assist them in deciding if they could be early lung cancer.
• Integration of the PRODICT test into the prostate cancer risk pathway
  Professor Ros Eeles, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
  Evaluating a ‘saliva’ genetic test to identify people at risk of developing prostate cancer, to find out how it can be integrated into the NHS.
• miONCO-Dx : A novel multi cancer early diagnostic test
  Dr Andrew Shapanis, Professor Paul Skipp, XGENERA 
  Improving the efficiency and evaluating the performance of a new cancer blood test for use as a screening tool. The test aims to detect 12 of the most lethal and common cancers at an early stage.
• Cost-effective multi-cancer early detection by measuring patient plasma amino acid cross sections with the Enlighten test
  Professor Andrew Davies, University of Southampton, and Dr Emma Yates, Proteotype Diagnostics 
  Testing how a new type of multi cancer early detection test performs in an NHS context. Researchers will also plan for how the test could be used within deprived communities.  
• Artificial Intelligence to support cancer early diagnosis in general practice. (AI-DIP)
  Professor Brendan Delaney, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
  Developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Assistant to improve the early diagnosis of cancer in general practice, using pancreatic and lung cancer as case studies.