Toothbrushes and ctDNA: Exciting early detection concepts from new teams formed at our sandpit workshops

Four newly funded teams have been formed to develop cancer early detection approaches at a sandpit-style workshop held last year. The aim of the workshop was to stimulate novel and innovative approaches to triaging primary care patients who may be at risk of receiving a cancer diagnosis.

The event united the cancer research community with researchers from outside biomedicine such as computational and data scientists, engineers, chemists and physicists. Over the course of the workshop, participants teamed up to develop pilot study proposals which they then pitched to receive funding for.

Sarah Birch, research programme manager for early detection and diagnosis at Cancer Research UK, said: “We are so pleased to see the results of such a great sandpit event. It’s amazing to witness the rapid transition from initial brainstorming on day 1, to the generation of impactful project applications with the formation of new multidisciplinary teams on day 3.  The sandpit participants really worked with such vigour, enthusiasm and commitment and as a result, will be working collaboratively to make significant strides forward in the ever-important field of early detection and diagnosis research.”

­Four of these multidisciplinary teams were successful and will each receive up to £230,000 seed-funding to conduct feasibility work.

Dr Megan Dowie, MRC head of molecular and cellular medicine, said: “Working in partnership with CRUK and EPSRC on this sandpit enabled us to bring together health professionals and researchers from different disciplines, who collectively tackled the challenge put in front of them and formed exciting collaborations. MRC is delighted to be supporting these innovative projects – awards that directly address our goal of enhancing the early detection and diagnosis of disease.”

These high-risk, high-reward projects will explore innovative areas of research including; developing a multimodal sampling and imaging capsule for colorectal cancer detection, a toothbrush-style sensor for oral biomarker monitoring, an improved method for ctDNA detection for pancreatic cancer and a multimodal risk stratification method for GI cancer.

Dr Kedar Pandya, EPSRC director for cross-council programmes, said: “Bringing together different disciplines and health professionals, this research will advance data science and sensor technologies, leading to better integrated transformative technologies in the healthcare system to enhance prediction and early diagnosis for cancer.”