Ground-breaking medical research in a consortium led by two UK universities will explore new ways to diagnose lung cancer earlier and save lives.
The Universities of Southampton and Leeds have come together with healthcare, diagnostics and informatics companies to test the best way of detecting lung cancers at a stage when they can still be cured.
The iDx LUNG project is linked to the NHS England Targeted Lung Health Checks programme and involves a number of collaborators including the Lung Cancer Initiative at Johnson & Johnson*, Roche, Oncimmune, Inivata, BC Platforms and others.
The research, part of the Government’s Early Diagnosis Mission to diagnose three-quarters of cancers at an early stage by 2028, is able to proceed thanks to approximately £3.5m-worth of funding from UK Research and Innovation’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF), part of a total investment of £10 million in the programme overall.
Peter Johnson, Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Southampton, who is leading the project, said: “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.”
The iDx LUNG project, which is coordinated by the Cancer Research UK/NIHR Southampton Clinical Trials Unit, will ask 15,000 people who attend NHS England lung health checks at mobile CT scanners in Hampshire and Yorkshire to give blood samples and nasal swabs for testing. The samples will be analysed for changes that could indicate early cancer development.
The tests to be used have been developed by the different companies that are working together on the programme, but have never been used in combination or with CT scanning.
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