‘Enlightened’ Proteotype Diagnostics to take multi-cancer detection tool global
Based at the Babraham Research Campus, the company has high hopes for its Enlighten diagnostic test and its financial projections dwarf the £1.5 million grant just received from the National Institute of Health and Care Research and Office of Life Science.
The company is currently fundraising and has approximately £700k available on a convertible note, which will be followed by a Series A raise in the next year.
Its extensive financial modelling suggests that getting Enlighten to revenue generation will require approximately £25m-30m. Such a financial target is unlikely to scare investors given the huge potential demand worldwide for the technology.
Co-founder and CSO, Emma Yates, and co-founder and CEO Wesley Sukdao tell Business Weekly that in terms of early markets, Proteotype is looking at private healthcare providers in the UK, EU, US and China. The value proposition to payers is combating the rising cost of cancer treatment by detecting cancer earlier, while improving outcomes for patients, they tell us.
“We will then target single payers in each jurisdiction based on our health economic modelling calculated during the current grant project (by Southampton Health Technology Assessment Centre).”
Proteotype currently has three full time employees at Babraham but plans to scale headcount to around 60 by 2035, following first Enlighten regulatory approval in 2030. The company intends to remain headquartered in Cambridge.
Yates said: “Our test is extremely cost effective compared to competitors. We're targeting £150, which is possible given the low costs of our manufactured assay kit. Our CEO is South African and is keen to bring Enlighten to emerging markets.”
Enlighten is innovative because it detects the host response to tumour development rather than relying on measuring material released from tumours. In this way, it detects cancer as early as the immune system does – rather than waiting for the tumour burden to increase to facilitate detection. The test is also first-in-class, which uses a new approach called Protein Cross Sections.
This provides quantitative proteomic analysis and absolute concentrations while also revealing reveals post-translational modifications. The fluorescence-based test is run in crude patient plasma, saving significant costs which are said to blitz the propositions of major competitors. Enlighten is a simple, scalable microplate reader assay which can utilise COVID-19 testing infrastructure.
The recent £1.5m was to clinically validate Enlighten in a 1350 patient population via the MODERNISED clinical study in collaboration with University of Southampton.
Not wasting a shot, Proteotype has existing clinical validation studies which look at predicting response to treatment and monitoring for the development of resistance using the same test kit – allowing the business to scale across the patient journey.
