Oxford Cancer Analytics raises $11M to detect lung cancer via a blood test

OXcan combines proteomics and artificial intelligence for early detection

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and early detection is key: there is a 12-fold increase in five-year survivorship between those detected at stage one versus stage four. Yet, over 70% of cases being diagnosed at a late stage.

A big part of the cause of that is due to the fact that by the time symptoms present, such as cough, shortness of breath, and back pain, the disease has already progressed to the point where it's no longer curable, explained Dr. Peter Jianrui Liu, co-founder and CEO of Oxford Cancer Analytics (OXcan), a medtech company developing blood tests for early cancer detection using advanced proteomics and AI, which announced an $11 million Series A funding round on Thursday from global investors, including in-field institutional investors in disease detection and diagnostics.

OXcan's test solves this problem by looking for proteins in the blood using existing equipment that is widely available across US laboratories. That means that, unlike a lot of other technologies that try to look for DNA, which requires millions of dollars to set up, OXcan's technology can be fully plugged in with the existing infrastructure.

"Imagine you can do the same blood test you got from your GP, but that exact same blood test you have there tells you whether you have lung cancer or not, and you can do it right there," said Liu.

'We hope to increase the number of people who are being screened for lung cancer, push them to existing clinical guidelines without altering anything, but still increasing number of people getting screened for lung cancer and increasing the number of people will be detected early and, finally, making them eligible for treatment with curative intent."

The challenge of detecting cancer earlier is that proteins are already flowing in our blood, but we just don't know which one to look for. OXcan uses machine learning to hone in on that panel so it knows what to look for, explained Liu.

"We look for the blood protein, a proteome, a map of the proteins in the blood at 4K resolution using our own equipment, using our own laboratory in Oxford, and then we have designed machine learning dedicated to this data because not all machine learning is the same," he explained.

One of the company's breakthroughs came when it realized that old machine learning, which has been plug and play, is not suitable for this data, which is part of the reason why a lot of companies have not had much reliable results.

"We designed our own machine learning approaches, we tried over 700 different machine learning algorithms into this dataset, to find the most stable and most generalizable outcome. So, we use machine learning that is tailored to screen these thousands of different protein data points and distill them into a focused panel of 20 biomarkers or less for early cancer detection," Liu explained. 

OXcan's tests, which have received ISO13485 certification, have over 85% sensitivity and specificity, and in some particular testing cases it has reached above 90%, compared to about 20 to 48% sensitivity compared to some of the other tests that have been recorded in the lung cancer early detection space. And this can save potentially millions of lives; there are 2 million people dying from lung cancer every year, including 131,000 in the U.S. alone in 2022.

The ultimate goal is to be able to screen as many people for lung cancer as possible, as the current uptake for those eligible for a low dose CT scan, which can detect lung cancer at the earliest stages, is less than 18%, and that's an improvement from 4.5% from before. OXcan hopes to increase that to 50%, if not more, by first administering its blood test. 

The new funding round was led by We Venture Capital and Cross-Border Impact Ventures, with participation from existing investors Eka Ventures, and Civilization Ventures, and new investors DigitalDx Ventures, Macmillan Cancer Support (Innovation Impact Investment Portfolio), Aurelium Ventures, and OKG Capital, along with several angel investors.

This latest investment, which brings OXcan’s total funding to date to $16.7 million, will be used to develop and globally commercialize its product, part of which involves appointing Dr. Heinrich Roder, co-founder of lung cancer diagnostic testing company Biodesix, as its new Senior Vice President, Research & Development.

"There are existing low dose CT screening programs available. There are some really big ones the UK has been spearheading, also there's a European one, and we're also planning to deploy the product in the US. That's why we recently brought on Dr Broder, as we're planning to set up a facility to run these tests in the US in order to deploy and make this available to patients by working with some existing diagnostic networks in the US who already have access to patients who are coming in for blood tests," said Liu. 

"Henrich started a company, about two decades ago now, that was an early pioneer in using protein and blood tests to detect lung cancer nodules. On imaging, sometimes you get these nodules that look ambiguous, it could be cancer or could be benign, and they don't know. He invented the blood test, along with the team, that can tell you whether it's malignant or benign. He has formally joined OxCan because he sees a lot of high potential and high innovation in this space."

In addition, along with the funding round, it was also announced that OXcan added two new members to its board: Gemma Sturt, Senior Investment Manager at We Venture Capital, Werfen’s Corporate Venture Arm, and Annie Theriault, Managing Partner at Cross-Border Impact Ventures.

With their inclusion, the board how has seven directors, including director Brad Wilson, former President Europe of GlaxoSmithKline.

"Gemma has a venture capital background, but she was trained in biochemistry, so quite relevant in the space. We Venture is the VC arm of Werfen Diagnostics, an international diagnostic company with US operations. They specialize in early detection companies, and we are one of the companies that they're investing in," said Liu. 

"Annie and Cross Border Impact Ventures, they focus on impacting health. They're backed by the Gates Foundation driven government alum, other LPs, and they focus on women's and maternal health, as well as healthcare in general in terms of impact. They only invest in things that not only have a North American or British influence, but also have a global impact. Cancer is such a widespread entity, we're working with 20 hospitals already across three continents, and that's one of the reasons why that has drawn their interest."

Another reason why Cross Border has taken an interest in OXcan is that lung cancer is on the rise in women while plateauing in men. For OXcan, however, lung cancer is just the beginning: not only does the company want to expand its blood test to other cancers, but to autoimmune diseases as well. 

"The ultimate goal, if you think beyond lung cancer, and also even beyond cancer, the platform can be applied for lung cancer, multi-cancer, other types of diseases, autoimmune disease, is to fundamentally transform the way we treat disease," said Liu.

"Modern medicine has very much symptom management, very reactive in its nature. ‘Oh, there's something wrong with you, let's fix it now. Let's put a bandaid on it now.’ Now it's about fundamentally shifting that paradigm to a proactive one. Let's prevent it, let's detect as early as possible."

(Image source: oxcan.org)