Intellectual Property: cancer diagnostics

Cancer Research UK (CRUK) provides specialist staff through its subsidiary Cancer Research Horizons (CRH), which operates at the interface between research and industry. 

These staff work with the Enterprise team, and build a project team around promising innovations that ensures seamless support for Birmingham researchers, with access to CRH translational funding, networks, training and expertise.

About 6,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with multiple myeloma each year, and about 50% of them receive a delayed diagnosis.

A new test in development by Drs Jennifer Heaney and Sian Faustini is set to reduce the number of delayed diagnoses by monitoring people with MGUS (Monoclonal Gammopathy of Unknown Significance), a precursor condition of myeloma.

People with MGUS are generally monitored every three months, and this currently requires visits to general practice or hospital clinics for a blood sample, which is then sent to a clinical laboratory for testing.

The researchers have developed a new high sensitivity, high-specificity test, called M-Self, to pick up patients with myeloma who require treatment. It is cheaper than laboratory-based tests, and most importantly, it can be used for testing at home.

In March, CRH awarded the researchers £230k of translational funding to develop a prototype for the test, and a clinical pilot will start later this year.

By August, Dr Heaney and Dr Faustini were receiving a further award, for Translation Project of the Year at CRH’s 2025 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Awards.

Also in attendance at the CRH Award Ceremony was Dr Ruchi Gupta, a finalist for the Entrepreneurial Group Leader of the Year award. Earlier this year, Dr Gupta was honoured with the Academic Award at the 2025 Women in Tech Awards, in recognition of her pioneering research in healthcare technologies.

Dr Gupta has developed a novel hydrogel that concentrates proteins and fluorescently labels them in a single step, and this technology can be used in many ways, including the development of a lollipop that would allow the collection of saliva proteins for oral cancer diagnostics.

Dr Gupta initially received support from the Enterprise team, whose Entrepreneur-in-Residence worked with her to explore the technology’s market potential, and is now part of CRH’s Cancer Tech Accelerator to get further training on commercialisation, and learn how best to translate her research to benefit patients.

Professor Paula Mendes won funding from the prestigious EU Horizon Europe Programme in 2024, and is now working with CRH and UoB Enterprise as she develops a new test for prostate cancer.

Current tests for prostate cancer identify Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), and a raised level in the blood can indicate a problem. But they cannot tell the difference between an aggressive prostate cancer, which will spread quickly and need immediate treatment, and one which may never grow enough to cause any harm.

Dr Mendes is developing a test that detects glycans, which are the sugars attached to PSA proteins, to see if there is actually cancer, and if so, how aggressive it’s likely to be, and is expecting to publish the results of clinical validation study in the near future.

This year she has worked with a UoBE Entrepreneur-in-Residence, who has provided a commercial perspective on the test.

Dr Mendes also received a grant from CRH Early Development Fund to do a clinical feasibility study at QE hospital, and worked with the CRH team to understand how to engage with patients and the public to get their input and feedback on the development of her diagnostic test.