UDX first product is a CRC Screening Test: a simple, minimally invasive and inexpensive blood-based screening test designed to detect early stage colorectal cancer. The test identifies those individuals who need to be referred for colonoscopy.
Solution
UDX is developing a Cancer Platform, a set of minimally-invasive, blood-based solutions for detecting cancer early when treatment-options are more plentiful. The Cancer Platform assays rely on a curated set of methylation marker panels; a simple blood sample collected as part of a routine check-up, can be processed at a reference laboratory or hospital using standard qPCR equipment.
The Technology
Combining biotechnology and big data.
EPIGENETICS
Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, assure the proper regulation of gene expression, controlling which part of the instructions (DNA) contained in a cell will be executed and which ones will be silenced. In cancer cells this mechanism is altered. When cells die their content is released to the bloodstream, including DNA. Measuring the methylation state of circulating DNA fragments specifically derived from cancer cells can give accurate information about the cell status and it can be used as biomarker for cancer screening and monitoring.
UDX has identified a proprietary panel of biomarkers that allows to differentiate cancer and adenoma patients from healthy individuals from a simple blood test.
BIOINFORMATICS
Machine Learning techniques allow computers to model the world without being explicitly programmed by a previous knowledge, optimizing the process with the information coming from new data sets.
UDX has developed bioinformatics pipeline and algorithms able to decode millions of biological data points, in order to identify the most relevant biomarkers to perform accurate predictions about the health condition of a patient.
