Industry case studies

Barts-Brighton ECMC has formed a partneship around the ATLANTIS trial, a personalised therapy study in bladder cancer. In partnership with Exelixis and Astellas, BARTS ECMC will run the translational oncology biomarker part of the study, supported by a grant of £550,000.

Barts-Brighton has also entered into a £4.6m partnership with AstraZeneca to deliver a randomised phase II study in breast cancer investigating TORC1 & 2 inhibition.

Imperial London ECMC has partnered with AZ Pharma and Roche Diagnostics to fund evaluation of cfDNA to diagnose EFGP mutant lung cancer in patients who are either unfit for or have declined biopsy but are willing to swallow tablets (gefitinib) for liquid biopsy diagnosed EFGR mutant positive lung cancer.

The National Lung Matrix Trial is a clinician-led collaborative study between the University of Birmingham, Cancer Research UK, Astra Zeneca and Pfizer. The trial is sponsored by the University of Birmingham and coordinated by the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit (CRCTU), with Professor Gary Middleton leading as Chief Investigator, and it will open in all ECMC centres across the UK.

The trial will capture lung cancer patients screened through the second phase of CRUK's Stratified Medicine Programme (SMP 2) initiative with stage IV disease, or stage III disease not amenable to surgery or radical radiotherapy. The trial will use a novel trial design consisting of a series of parallel, multi-centre, single arm, phase II trial arms, each testing an experimental targeted drug(s) in a population stratified by multiple pre-specified actionable putative biomarkers. Trial participants will be placed into different arms depending on the specific drug they receive, and into different cohorts depending on the type of NSCLC and gene change they have.

Manchester ECMC has teamed up with Silicon Biosystems in a £700,000 venture to explore circulating tumour cell genomic heterogeneity and drug resistance signatures.

Southampton ECMC has partnered with Huntington Life Sciences (UK) for the development of assays to predict cytokine storm, in the development of novel immunostimulatory antibodies. As these therapies become more prevalent, predicting this potentially deadly side-effect is of vital importance.

In 2014 Belfast ECMC undertook a first-in-man trial of a novel anti-angiogenic peptide, ALM201, discovered at Queen's University Belfast. This was developed into a drug in collaboration wtih Almac Discovery, a local biotechnology company, and the trial will be run across the ECMC Network.