Chunxiao Song, a group leader at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, is developing a new highly sensitive technique to measure DNA methylation. This project award, jointly funded by CRUK and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) will allow him to collaborate with OHSU researcher Thuy Ngo. Thuy’s research focuses on the detection of RNA in the blood. Their aim is to use a combination of these epigenetic and transcriptome detection technologies to diagnose cancer earlier and provide information on where the cancer originated from. They will test their approach in the context of pancreatic and oesophageal cancer as these cancers have particularly low survival rates.
Read more about this story in the interview Chunxiao gave to CRUK here.
Update (February 2019): Chunxiao’s technology has been published in Nature Biotechnology. Read more about this here.