Scottish biotech company, BioCaptiva, has developed a “liquid biopsy” technology device that is to revolutionise the early diagnosis and monitoring of difficult to detect cancers.
The University of Edinburgh spin-out has gathered over £1 million in seed funding from Edinburgh-based business angel investment syndicate, Archangels, and Scottish Enterprise, to help develop the technology.
BioCaptiva has developed a medical device that captures cfDNA (circulating free DNA) from the blood of patients in much greater quantities than the current standard of a single blood draw can, overcoming a significant current constraint of cancer liquid biopsy testing. Named BioCollector, it functions alongside a standard apheresis machine, filtering cfDNA from the patient’s blood system.
The BioCollector is based on a decade of research at the University of Edinburgh, led by Professor Tim Aitman, director of the Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine, and Professor Mark Bradley of the University’s School of Chemistry.
Prototypes indicate the potential to detect early-stage cancers in patients without a surgical biopsy and promising new approaches for monitoring and detecting disease recurrence, which is presently not possible. This enables to gain deeper insights into tumour biology resulting in better patient outcomes.
The seed investment, among other things, will enable BioCaptiva to in-license the technology and carry out its first trials to prove its safe use in humans. The company has been launched with the assistant of Edinburgh Innovations, the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service.
If the technology prove successful, BioCaptiva plans to scale up its technology ahead of regulatory clinical trials which are scheduled for completion during 2024.
BioCaptiva expects interest to come predominantly from companies in developing novel cancer tests constrained by present methods of extracting cfDNA, where the higher yield achieved by the BioCollector will increase the sensitivity of their detection methods.
