EKF Diagnostics’ PointMan demonstrates cancer diagnostic potential

EKF Diagnostics has announced new data from a collaborative study that underlines how its PointMan DNA enrichment technology can help to improve the diagnosis of cancer.

The latest results from the company's ongoing collaboration with the Institute of Life Sciences at the University of Swansea has further confirmed the effectiveness of PointMan for isolating and characterising low-level DNA mutations in blood.

Tests carried out using blood samples from endometrial and lung cancer patients showed that EKF's technology was able to sensitively detect cfDNA mutations that act as biomarkers for these diseases.

As such, it is hoped that PointMan could now be used as a means of testing for these biomarkers in the early detection of cancers.

Julian Baines, chief executive officer of EKF Diagnostics, said: "We can now move on to the next stage of evaluation, working with greater numbers of patient samples to clearly establish a correlation between cfDNA mutation status and the development of various solid tumours."

This comes after the Swansea team was able earlier this year to use PointMan to identify gene mutations associated with response to drug treatment among metastatic melanoma patients.