The Cambridge-based biomarker discovery and diagnostics company has been awarded funding as part of the Biomedical Catalyst programme.
Cambridge-based biomarker discovery and diagnostics company Tagomics has been awarded £860,000 Innovate UK funding as part of the Biomedical Catalyst programme for the testing and development of innovative healthcare solutions.
The funding will support the customisation of Tagomics’s Interlace platform to develop a highly sensitive and specific diagnostic test for the early detection and treatment of colorectal cancer, and a subsequent pilot study with the NHS.
“We believe that the unique, information-rich dataset that Interlace provides us will be pivotal in detecting colorectal cancer at the earliest possible stages of development, enabling treatment of the cancer when it is most vulnerable to modern therapeutics, with the aim of dramatically improving patient outcomes,” said Robert Neely, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Tagomics.
Mutations associated with colorectal cancer
Tagomics’ Interlace platform is a multiomics workflow that unlocks disease-associated DNA biomarkers via epigenetic profiling which enriches unmethylated DNA for analysis without modifying the underlying DNA sequence.
The Biomedical Catalyst grant will be used to apply Interlace to the detection of genetic and epigenetic mutations associated with colorectal cancer, including the development of new models for the analysis of patient multiomic profiles and the identification of new disease biomarkers.
A pilot study of the diagnostic test for the early detection of colorectal cancer in a clinical patient cohort will be led by Arash Assadsangabi, consultant physician and gastroenterologist at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, in collaboration with the Northern Care Alliance Research Collection biobank. The study will profile 250 patients suspected of having colorectal cancer to validate identified biomarkers and demonstrate the use of multiomic profiling for early detection of disease.
Following the completion of the project, Tagomics has said that it will further expand the capabilities and applications of Interlace with the support of Agilent Technologies.
