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

癌症影响着三分之一的人的一生，对世界各地的医疗系统来说是一个沉重的负担，每年给英国经济造成110亿英镑的损失。牛津大学（Oxford University）的衍生公司Oxford MediStress最近开发了一种新的手指刺血测试方法，通过快速、简便地评估白细胞的活力，可以定量评估免疫系统的一个关键组成部分。该公司认为，考虑到这项技术测量免疫功能的方式，它在提供癌症的早期指示方面具有相当大的前景。它也有可能成为医生监测癌症进展的重要新工具。然而，该系统中的一个关键光学元件非常昂贵，这意味着该系统过于昂贵，目前无法向公众销售。在这个项目中，团队将评估可替代的光学元件，这些元件承诺以较低的成本完成同样的工作。该项目的一个关键产出将是一个原型的演示，该原型可以以较低的成本进行测试。

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.