- By Matt Winkler
Excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer (also called colon cancer, or bowel cancer) is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the U.S. Every year in the U.S., more than 95,000 men and women will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and 50,000 will die of the condition annually. In Europe, this annual death number rises to more than 200,000, and globally, comes in at nearly 700,000.
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The intrinsic value of VNRX
A large majority of these deaths are preventable.
Patients with bowel cancer caught early (at stage I) have an average 97% five-year survival rate. If colorectal cancer is not caught until it has spread (stage IV), the chances of surviving five years or more falls to just 7%. Despite these figures, currently, fewer than one in 10 people are diagnosed at stage I.
The European Union, as well as a number of countries across the globe (not the U.S. yet, but it's only a matter of time) have mandated colorectal screening in an attempt to try and improve on the number of patients that receive early diagnosis and - in turn - qualify for a 97% five-year survival rate.
There's a secondary issue, however, and it's rooted in the accuracy of the current SOC diagnostics. These include a colonoscopy, and what's called a fecal immunochemical test (FIT). First, a patient has FIT. If it's negative, they repeat a year later. If it's positive, they go on to a colonoscopy - a procedure involving a physician using a thin camera to inspect the bowel wall. FITs will often result in false positives, however, and this translates to wasted time and money in physicians performing unnecessary colonoscopies.
One company that is trying to solve this issue is VolitionRX Ltd. (VNRX).
The company, based in Belgium, has developed a blood test called Nu-Q. It's designed as a second line diagnostic to the FIT test, targeting improved accuracy ahead of a patient needing to be booked in for a colonoscopy.
When a tumor develops, the tumor macro-environment is incredibly unstable compared to healthy environments. Cells are dying off frequently, and as they die, they release matter into the blood. Some of this matter is what are called nucleosomes. A nucleosome is a structural unit of a chromosome, consisting of a length of DNA coiled around a core of what are called histones, which are basically just a building block of a chromosome - a sort of glue, if you like. The nucleosomes of cancerous cells differ detectably from these of healthy cells. With its Nu-Q test, Volition is able to take a small drop of blood form a patient, add it to some market nucleosomes, and pull out a color-coded response that correlates with the number of cancerous nucleosomes present in the sample. The more cancerous nucleosomes, the more developed the cancer, and the more intense the color of the test on reading. As a side note, Nu-Q stands for nucleosome quantity. In a study presented last year, the company was able to demonstrate that the use of this test in line with the FIT test reduced the number of colonoscopies against a control group by 25%.