Southampton University and Leeds University have collaborated with major companies to find a way of detecting lung cancers at an early enough stage to cure them.
Companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Oncimmune, Inivata, BC Platforms, and others are working with the universities after £3.5m worth of funding was made available from the UK Research and Innovation’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, which will help the government’s Early Diagnosis Mission.
The Early Diagnosis Mission is an ambition to diagnose three-quarters of cancers at an early stage by 2028.
Professor Peter Johnson, Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Southampton, who is leading the project, told the University:
‘We urgently need to find ways to detect lung cancer early, to drive up people’s chances of a cure. This unique collaborative effort between universities, the NHS and companies with ground-breaking technologies is aimed at doing just that.’
As well as targeting increased survival rates, the project – called iDx-LUNG – hopes to improve testing of high-risk patients in a more cost-effective and efficient way than CT scanning.
The tests to be used in the project have been developed have never been used in combination with CT scanning and have been developed by the major aforementioned companies.
