Our aim is to develop a single breath test to diagnose five major gastrointestinal cancers, providing a non-invasive triage test to direct patients with non-specific symptoms to specialised investigations.
Late diagnosis is a common feature of major gastrointestinal cancers. In the UK, 75,277 patients are diagnosed and 44,455 die annually. NICE referral guidelines are age-dependent and mainly include red-flag symptoms, resulting in cancer diagnosis at an advanced stage, the current cancer yield of urgent referral pathways is just 4.4–5%.
Five-year survival rates remain poor: oesophageal (15.9%), gastric (20.7%), pancreatic (9.0%), liver (12.6%) and colorectal (50.7%).
Our state-of-the-art dedicated laboratory suite at Imperial College London's Hammersmith Campus is purpose-built for breath analysis. It features non-VOC emitting infrastructure with positive pressure ventilation, four laboratories dedicated to different workflow stages, plus cell culture and tissue processing facilities. ISO-17025 accreditation planned for 2026.
We use thermal desorption gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TD-GC-TOF-MS), adhering to EMA guidance. A bespoke LIMS provides full traceability from breath sampling to data generation.
This platform processes and analyses GC-MS breath data using molecular network analysis to identify VOC biomarkers that separate cancer from controls.
A breath test pathway for cancer would save the NHS a substantial amount of money compared to the current pathway. 99% of patients rate breath testing as easy or very easy.
Biomarkers owned by Imperial College London. The Hanna Group are inventors of seven patents filed worldwide covering novel VOC biomarker panels for multiple gastrointestinal cancer types.