NEW YORK – DNAe, Imperial College London, and the University of Leicester said on Wednesday they are developing a liquid biopsy test based on DNAe's proprietary next-generation sequencing technology to be used to monitor treatment and detect early recurrence of breast cancer.
The project comes with an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership award, which formalizes a collaboration between DNAe and ICL professor Charles Coombes and builds on work he did with Jacqui Shaw, head of the department of genetics and genome biology at the University of Leicester.
Under the terms of the partnership, a junior researcher will be based at DNAe to integrate expertise from the academic partners into the test. Financial and other details were not disclosed.
DNAe's sequencing technology enables detection of tumor DNA from raw blood samples in hours, enabling more timely treatment decisions. "Any delays to appropriate cancer care can lower the chance of survival and increase treatment-associated problems and costs," Coombes said in a statement.
In 2018, DNAe received $10.9 million from the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for rapid, NGS-based infectious disease diagnostics.