CellRACE - Toolkit for Advanced Cancer Diagnosis
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | Karolinska Institutet - Department of Physiology & Pharmacology |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 1 500 000 |
| Project duration | December 2015 - December 2017 |
| Status | Completed |
Purpose and goal
Advances in medicine often allow successful treatment of the primary tumor. However, when metastasis occurs, the survival is very low. Current diagnostics fails to accurately predict the risk of metastasis and patients receive inappropriate treatment. Our aim is to develop a diagnostic device, which detects cancer metastasis at an early stage. We verified the proof-of-concept of our idea and developed a company to commercialise the technology. This founded a solid ground for future expansion.
Expected results and effects
We tested our technology developed in cooperation with Cline Scientific with human breast cancer cells. We observed significant effects on behavior of cancer cells and could identify several response patterns. Moreover, we could clearly distinguish metastatic and non-metastatic cancer cells. These encouraging results prompted us to establish collaborations with clinicians who would test our diagnostic tool. We founded a company, Liv Diagnostics AB, which continues the R&D. The company successfully concluded second round of financing.
Planned approach and implementation
We exceeded original expectations and not only founded a company with 3 employees, board of directors and scientific advisors, but also achieved two successful financing rounds. We originally planned to test our technology with mouse and human cancer cells. Since tests with human cells were significant and encouraging we continued using human cells and focused on further sophistication of the technology. This approach increased our chances to obtain the best performance of the future product.