Oxford Cancer Analytics (OXcan), a medtech company specialising in developing blood tests for early cancer detection using advanced proteomics and AI, has secured $11 million in Series A funding. This investment brings the company’s total funding raised to date to $16.7 million.
The round was led by We Venture Capital and Cross-Border Impact Ventures, with participation from return investors Eka Ventures and Civilization Ventures. Also, new investors DigitalDx Ventures, Macmillan Cancer Support (Innovation Impact Investment Portfolio), Aurelium Ventures, OKG Capital, and several prominent angel investors contributed to the investment round.
This round follows investments in UK-based cancer treatment-related startups, including Genomics, Carcinotech, and Curve Therapeutics.
Commercialise early cancer detection
This investment positions the company to develop and commercialise its new generation of minimally invasive liquid biopsy blood tests for the early detection of lung cancer. It will help the company test deployment to improve patient outcomes by enabling cancer detection earlier.
In addition to the investment, Gemma Sturt, Senior Investment Manager at We VentureCapital, Werfen’s Corporate Venture Arm and Annie Theriault, Managing Partner at Cross-Border Impact Ventures have joined the OXcan board of directors.
“The power of the OXcan proteomics biomarker discovery platform and the data generated by Oxcan stand out against the backdrop of other liquid biopsy companies, indicating a truly superior performance in the identification of early stage lung cancer,” said Louise Warme, MD, Head of WeVenture Capital. “We have been very impressed by the team to date and look forward to supporting the company in the next phase of its growth to offer its first product to patients.”
“Macmillan has a proud history of supporting groundbreaking new projects that can transform care for people living with cancer,” said Felix Litzkow, Head of Impact Investments for Macmillan Cancer Support. “OXcan’s simple, low cost and accurate blood test has the potential to make it easier to diagnose lung cancer, and to increase the number of people being tested.”
Founders’ background
OXcan was founded in 2020 by Dr. Peter Jianrui Liu and Dr. Andreas Halner, experts in oncology innovation and machine learning. Peter is a DPhil candidate in Clinical Medicine, and Andreas is a DPhil in Clinical Medicine and Machine Learning. In 2019, the duo won the grand prize in the Oxford Foundry’s All-Innovate Student Ideas competition.
How was the idea born?
Current diagnostic methods rely on techniques that are costly, invasive and have side effects, which means these methods can’t be used to screen for people at a high risk of cancer regularly. Lung cancer is by far the most common cause of cancer death in the UK, accounting for around 21% of deaths. Although early diagnosis is essential for improving patient outcomes, more than 75% of patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage, and this situation has worsened since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is where OXcan comes into the picture by developing affordable early cancer detection blood tests to enable treatments with curative intent.
How does OXcan work?
OXcan’s protein-based blood test identifies molecular signatures for high-risk lung cancer patients, leveraging a diverse global biobank to ensure worldwide scalability. Using advanced proteomics and AI, it fills an unmet niche in the liquid biopsy space by offering a high-accuracy protein-based blood test to detect cancers with the highest mortality burden. This blood test can be conducted in an affordable, minimally invasive, and routine manner with superior accuracy and localisation capacity in large populations.
The company’s diverse, global biobank allows for more reliable biomarker identification across different populations, to help ensure the test will be effective worldwide.
Their initial machine learning doubled detection rates across eight cancer types by narrowing thousands of proteins to key biomarker signatures. Additionally, OXcan has formed global partnerships, collaborating with over 20 healthcare centers across three continents to develop and deploy its technology.
“OXcan is working with leading lung cancer screening programs worldwide to develop products that will be fully integrated with existing clinical pathways to enhance lung cancer screening, accelerate adoption, improve patient outcomes, and reduce healthcare system burdens from lung cancer,” added Dr. Daniel Szulc, Chief Product Officer at OXcan.
“I have worked with OXcan’s founders since the company’s seed round of funding and have been impressed by the quality of work done to date,” added Brad Wilson, OXcan Chairman and former President Europe of GlaxoSmithKline. “The significant investment I have made in this Series A round is a concrete demonstration of my strong conviction and belief in OXcan, its strategy, and its team.”
The post Breakthrough in lung cancer detection: OXcan raises $11M for affordable liquid biopsies appeared first on Tech Funding News.