Hope for breakthrough lung cancer test
8:20am Thursday 10th March 2011
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SCIENTISTS in York are hoping to make a breakthrough in developing a non-invasive test for lung cancer.
Cizzle Biotech, a small company set up to further research into the disease, has received £300,000 from Yorkshire Cancer Research and the White Rose Technology Seedcorn Fund to continue its work.
The advances are a spin-off of research started by Dr Dawn Coverley at the University of York, on the Ciz1 b-variant gene, which it is hoped can be used to develop a simple blood test.
Doctors around the world would be able to use the test to improve predict drug response, monitor response to treatment and detect residual disease.
John Lucas, head of Cizzle, said: “The potential of our proposition to benefit cancer patients has increased dramatically with the discovery that the Ciz1 b-variant is prevalent in both small cell and non-small cell lung cancer plasma.
“We know that b-variant is easily detected in plasma from late stage lung cancer patients and absent from plasmas from healthy people, so a key goal now is to test whether Ciz1 b-variant is present in the blood of patients with early stage disease.
“In non-small cell lung cancer, for example, accurate staging is particularly important for decision making about surgery and chemotherapy, making a reliable biomarker such as this highly desirable.”
if Cizzle, which is based at York Science Park, can successfully develop an early stage, non-invasive lung cancer test, patients who have yet to display symptoms of lung cancer may be diagnosed and treated sooner, resulting in improved chances of recovery.
Morgan Williams, Yorkshire Cancer Research’s commercial development officer, said: “This latest investment is another example of that approach, where we financially support good projects that have real potential to fulfil a need, in this case in lung cancer.”
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