Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK and while 5 year survival rates are 75% if the disease is detected early, they decrease sharply to 5% in advanced stage disease. Early diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer are essential in reducing mortality by detecting the cancer at an early stage. In the UK, there is currently a national screening programme for bowel cancer (the NHS Bowel Screening programme) which uses Faecal Occult blood test (FOBt) as a primary screening test followed by colonoscopy in those that test positive. However, although FOBt has encouraging sensitivity, the compliance with the test is only 50%. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a blood bases marker that would either improve compliance or improve the performance of the test. 

Identifying biomarkers and risk factors for colorectal cancer

  • John Timms (UCL), Usha Menon, Aleksandra Gentry-Maharaj (UCL)
  • MRC

Investigation of a cancer specific serum response in relation to the development of colorectal cancer

  • Usha Menon (UCL), Hans Wandall (University of Copenhagen); Anne Dawnay (UCLH, UK) Aleksandra Gentry-Maharaj (UCL)
  • Danish Council for Independent Research

 

Serial Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Classifiers For Personalised Risk Stratification and Early Detection of Lung, Bowel and Pancreatic Cancers in Women (SAICRED)
  • Dr Oleg Bluyss, Prof Alexey Zaikin, Prof Usha Menon (UCL), Dr Sophia Apostolidou (UCL)
  • CRUK

Construction of Graph-Based Network Longitudinal Algorithms to Identify Screening AND Prognostic Biomarkers and Therapeutic Targets 

  • Prof Alexey Zaikin, Dr Oleg Blyuss, Prof Usha Menon (UCL), Dr Andy Ryan (UCL), Dr Sophia Apostolidou (UCL)
  • MRC

Biomarker Discovery in Colorectal and Lung Cancer -Serum Samples from UKCTOCS using microRNA, Tumour Autoantibody and Proteomics Technologies

Commercial collaboration

An investigation of novel epigenetic biomarkers for cancer screening and diagnosis- colorectal, and lung cancers

Commercial collaboration