Development of an improved biophotonic system for a novel cancer detection/monitoring blood test

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Affecting one in three people over the course of their lifetimes, cancer represents a significant burden to healthcare systems around the world, costing the UK economy £11 billion annually. Oxford MediStress, an Oxford University spinout company, has recently developed a new fingerprick blood test that allows the quantitative assessment of a key component of the immune system by evaluating the vitality of white blood cells in a rapid, easy-to-use format. The Company believes this technology holds considerable promise to provide an early indication of cancer, given the way it measures immune function. It also has the potential to become an important new tool with which doctors can monitor cancer progression. However, a key optical component in the system is quite costly, meaning the system is too expensive to be marketed to the general public currently. In this project the team will evaluate alternative optical components that promise to the job just as well at a fraction of the cost. A key output of the project will be demonstration of a prototype that can perform the test at a substantially lower cost.