NEW YORK – Microbial cancer detection firm Micronoma said Tuesday that it is collaborating with the University of New South Wales, Sydney under a $4 million grant from the Australian government to apply artificial intelligence technology toward developing microbial biomarkers for the early detection of liver cancer.
Amany Zekry and Emad El-Omar, both professors at UNSW Medicine & Health, are leading the effort alongside co-principal investigator and Micronoma CSO Eddie Adams.
The group will use Micronoma's AI-driven microbial biomarker technology to detect, validate, and translate blood-borne microbial-derived biomarkers for the early detection of HCC — something the company has already been working on internally.
Micronoma CEO Sandrine Miller-Montgomery said in a statement that interest in the link between circulating microbiome signatures and cancer early detection has been growing since the firm's proof-of-concept publication in Nature last year.
"Developing a method to enable the identification of robust microbial plasma biomarker signatures of HCC is in our product pipeline, and this collaboration enables us to fast-track product development," she added.