Public Funding for Amlo Biosciences Limited

People are living longer than they did 100 years ago but many spend their later years in poor health. The attention in healthcare is mainly on the prevention of diseases such as skin cancer, by encouraging people to protect their skin from the sun. For older people this can be too late as they will already have signs of skin damage in the form of brown/black growths that they may worry are cancer. Currently the main way to test if these growths are cancer or not, is to cut out them out, and have them assessed by a pathologist. Most growths can be classified as cancerous or not cancerous, but for some growths it is difficult to tell from looking under the microscope alone so analysis of DNA is carried out. This can be uncertain and is expensive. Inability to determine whether the growth is cancer of not may result in following up the person for numerous appointments to look out for any signs of cancer. This can be stressful for people, and for older people particularly, this may be worse as they may be less able to attend the follow-up appointments and undergo treatments due to their other medical conditions, because they are less mobile, or because they are unable to travel. We already have a test which is used for melanoma (a type of skin cancer) to pick out those tumours which are least likely to spread. It looks for the presence or absence of two proteins in the skin overlying the tumour. We have also used this test to look at a variety of clinically worrying brown/black skin growths, and this suggested that the test could be used to identify those growths which are not cancers. This would allow medical teams to give people to correct results and the right treatments. In this new study, we will look at a large number of brown/black growths which are common in the elderly, and test whether we can correctly pick out those growths which are not cancer. This will support the development of the test as a product which can be used in pathology labs to pick out the growths which are not dangerous. People with growths which are not dangerous would not have to attend unnecessary hospital appointments, which will reduce stress, and save money for the NHS and other healthcare providers around the world.

Melanoma is a skin cancer with an increasing worldwide incidence. The risk of the primary tumour spreading is estimated based on microscopic appearance and depth of the original tumour. Tumours classified as low risk are followed up clinically over five years but approximately 10% of these low-risk (stage I) patients will develop metastatic disease with an extremely poor prognosis. There is therefore an urgent unmet need to develop new tests to accurately determine an individual’s risk of disease progression. We have identified two proteins (AMLo) in the skin overlying the primary tumour which are lost in high-risk melanoma. We have validated this test in over 400 melanoma Stage I biopsies with known clinical outcomes and have shown that use of this test can accurately predict melanomas which are genuinely low-risk and those which are high-risk and needing increased surveillance and treatment. We intend to produce a diagnostic kit to measure AMLo in tumour tissue biopsies suitable for large-scale manufacture fitting seamlessly into the existing procedures. The use of AMLo in clinical practice has real potential to reduce costs to the NHS, provide reassurance and improving outcomes of patients.