The Cutting Edge… Imperial’s Diagnostics Showcase

A free lunch, South Kensington and the newest medical diagnostic technology - what’s not to like? Yesterday’s Medtech Links Event from Imperial College London was an inspiring showcase of the medtech being developed by scientists from the prestigious institute.

The phrase ‘it’s impossible until it’s done’ comes to mind when considering some of the devices, but this is exactly what medicine needs - experts who think big and then make it happen.

The event, held in the impressive Royal School of Mines, started with sandwiches and posters of the work that would be discussed in the subsequent sessions. As a lone GP (signified as an ‘external’ audience member by a red dot on my badge) I could see the majority of attendees were from Imperial (with a blue dot on badge). But with many of the posters featuring point of care diagnostics targeted for rollout in primary care (yay!), I wished there were more coalface clinicians at the event to take inspiration and get involved in the innovation.

Unfortunately, I could only attend the first hour of the showcase triptych but the four talks from that session were eye-opening. Sylvain Ladame opened with work from his lab developing direct-to-skin patches that detect cancerous skin lesions using microRNAs. It’s incredible to think that one day a GP may be able to apply a squidgy plaster next to a mole and a day later, have the results back from the lab whether the lesion is likely to be cancerous or not. In combination with the AI tools discussed in my last post from Skin Analytics, the future of skin cancer diagnosis will revolutionise over the next few years.

Delving into smaller and smaller entities, Leah Frenette’s talk about nanozyme technology left the mind boggling. Tiny particles that act like enzymes (ahem, nanozymes) are being used to amplify weak signals, for example the strip on a lateral flow test. Although LFTs for covid and pregnancy tests, seem to work well at the moment, the potential for use with new biomarkers e.g. cancer proteins, could transform how we diagnose and detect diseases.

A company that seems to be well on the way in this process is ProtonDx, whose CEO, Prof Pantelis Georgiou, gave a run-through of their diagnostic technologies, which are already on the market. Using X-Men-like features (magnetic beads!) which amplify nucleic acids from a sample), ProtonDx’s shoebox-sized instrument can perform pathogen screens in less than 30 minutes. For a former hospital doctor, who would often wait days for a respiratory virus screen to come back from the lab, the thought of being able to obtain a diagnosis in such a short time frame and in any context is incredible. And adding further awe to the mix, Prof Georgiou showed ProtonDx’s technology being used in Africa to detect malaria. The potential of such technology is huge.

Rounding off the four talks was Session 1’s Chair, Professor Hanna, explaining the use of breath testing to diagnose upper GI cancers. The surgeon explained how different gastrointestinal tract cancers gave different profiles of volatile organic compounds (VOC), which could be detected from something as simple as a patient breathing into a tube. Although the concept exists already for detecting H. pylori in the gut, the thought of cancer being detected this way is concept-breaking. The technology is now set for validation testing and is being trialled in multiple NHS Trusts across the country.

The underlying thread linking all the innovations discussed was the use of a simple action (collecting a breath, placing a patch or taking a drop of bodily fluid) in an incredibly complex scientific process. For the user, however, the diagnostic result seems to be obtained simply. If I hadn’t understood the science behind it, I would think it worked through magic.

But this isn’t magic, this is science and the best kind: it is diligent, sustained application of knowledge to make medicine appear simple. Ground-breaking and exciting, I cannot wait to hear more.