Project description
Like pregnancy, cancers may soon be detected early with a simple test kit
The human gastrointestinal system is home to a flourishing community of microorganisms, the gut microbiota. Changes in this microscopic ecosystem have been increasingly linked to several types of cancers. Given the gut's critical role in the reabsorption of liquids and nutrients into the bloodstream, the activities and metabolites of gut microbiota affect tissues systemically. Biomarkers of cancer localised to the gut could facilitate very early detection of cancer-causing abnormalities, and subsequently early treatment and significantly improved prognoses. BiomStrip plans to exploit this potential with a simple at-home test system similar to a pregnancy kit. It could soon put preventative medicine in the hands - and gut - of patients.
Objective
Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally, causing 1 in 6 deaths. If cancer is diagnosed at early stage, it is highly likely to be treated successfully. Once it has grown and spread, therapy is vastly more difficult and costly, and survival rate drops rapidly. Screening is a vital healthcare element for early detection but suffers from burdens of cost, capacity, compliance, and detection sensitivity problems.
BiomStrip introduces a pioneering screening solution that can carry out cancer screening in the fashion of the common pregnancy tests. Building on our recent breakthrough results in biomarker validation granting TRL6 stage, we have designed a diagnostic device that is low-cost, non-invasive, accurate, can be handled by consumer, and bought over-the counter. The diagnostic method is based on detecting dysbiosis of gut microbial flora, a highly sensitive indicator of pathophysiological processes able to selectively show disease onset at super-early stage, even before histological changes are observable. The method is ultimately able to detect most cancer types and even other diseases, making it a future platform technology.
For highest scalability, fastest time-to-market, explosive growth, low resource-intensity, and minimised risk and overheads, we will license production and commercialisation to established multinational companies, keeping our focus as high-tech SME. Breast cancer will be our market entry point and other diseases will be covered subsequently form own resources.
To engineer this Workplan, a feasibility study will assess entry use cases and their markets, analyse business model and partnership options, and evaluate IPR strategies in a Strategic Business Plan.
The disruptive approach offers to transform cancer screening from top-down to bottom-up: empowering patients, gradually alleviating healthcare systems large effort and sums spent on preventive cancer diagnostics, and drastically improving therapeutical effectiveness.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologybreast cancer
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineobstetrics
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
4032 DEBRECEN
Hungary
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.