EKF Diagnostics has announced a new collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital that will see the organisations working to create a new cancer diagnostic tool.

The two-year collaboration will involve the development of PointMan assays that can effectively detect treatable cancer mutations in blood samples. The focus will be on lung, breast and skin cancer.

“EKF Diagnostics and Massachusetts General Hospital will collaborate to create new PointMan assays for cancer diagnosis.“

This follows a detailed evaluation of PointMan DNA enrichment technology by the hospital. Under the terms of the collaboration, EKF will design and develop high-sensitivity assays which will be utilised by the hospital, with a view to clinically validating PointMan in the detection of existing and novel mutations.

It would represent a major step towards the improvement of patient outcomes in the hospital, while further underlining the benefits of the PointMan technology.

Andrew Webb, chief executive officer of EKF Molecular Diagnostics, said: "The results of an initial assessment, and now this two-year collaboration, moves us even closer to the routine use of blood-based tests for cancer rather than a tissue biopsy."

This comes after a University of Swansea study earlier this year demonstrated the effectiveness of PointMan for isolating and characterising low-level DNA mutations in the blood.