Personalised cancer medicine start-up Curesponse has become the latest MedTech company to move in at the Innovation Gateway at The London Cancer Hub in Sutton, south London.
Curesponse has developed a platform for evaluating drug response and guiding personalised cancer treatment for cancer, based on technology spun out from research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
The company becomes part of a growing innovation ecosystem developing at The London Cancer Hub, joining fellow Innovation Gateway tenants Vesynta – a start-up delivering personalised dosing guided by ‘medicine exposure’ measurements – and The Exercise Clinic, a company offering physiotherapy and exercise regimes for cancer patients.
Other organisations on site at The London Cancer Hub include The Institute of Cancer Research – which alongside the London Borough of Sutton is leading The London Cancer Hub project – The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and Harris Academy Sutton, a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) specialist secondary school.
Evaluating drug response
Curesponse describes its proprietary cResponse™ technology as a unique ‘genomic-functional’ platform for evaluating drug response in patient tumour tissues.
The cResponse™ platform combines rapid genomic sequencing with a functional assay that preserves the tissue’s architecture and microenvironment, enabling prioritisation of different therapeutic options for cancer patients.
The technology is already CE marked and approved for marketing in several countries. The company is also executing a multi-centre clinical programme in London with Imperial College London, The Royal Marsden and other leading cancer sites.
The London Cancer Hub
The London Cancer Hub aims to create the world’s leading district for cancer research, treatment and commercial enterprise. Ultimately, the project will create an estimated 7,000 jobs in the life sciences sector and will contribute an estimated £1.2bn each year to the UK’s economy.
The Innovation Gateway is The London Cancer Hub’s flagship innovation space, made up of a mix of modern, sophisticated laboratories, break-out spaces, hot-desks, offices and kitchen areas.
The building is located metres from the £75m Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery, home to teams of expert scientists from the ICR who have made it the world’s most successful academic drug discovery unit in oncology.
More companies are expected to announce taking up tenancies at the Innovation Gateway soon.
Curesponse is one of several new occupiers at the Innovation Gateway, but there is still some laboratory and collaboration space available. Companies interested in taking space should contact Andy Carr, the ICR’s business development lead for The London Cancer Hub, or Ciara Hanson, Head of The London Cancer Hub programme at the London Borough of Sutton.
Professor Kristian Helin, Chief Executive at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:
“We’re very pleased to welcome Curesponse as part of the first wave of new arrivals to the Innovation Gateway, where they’ll join a growing community of start-ups and spin-outs. It is often at the interfaces between research disciplines or sectors that big breakthroughs are made – and we hope that companies like Curesponse, in collaboration with the ICR and our other partners at The London Cancer Hub, help to deliver real step changes in the creation and delivery of cancer treatments.”
Councillor Ruth Dombey, Leader of Sutton Council, said:
“It is fantastic news that Curesponse has joined the London Cancer Hub. Their research could help patients get the exact treatment they need. We look forward to seeing how they work with partners across The London Cancer Hub district to drive the technological advances that tackle cancer.”
Guy Neev, Curesponse’s Chief Executive Officer, said:
“We are very excited to join The London Cancer Hub and work together with The Institute of Cancer Research to advance cancer care and cancer research in the United Kingdom. Our combined genomic-functional platform has already been utilized by dozens of cancer researchers and global pharma companies and we are looking forward to making this platform available to cancer researchers and pharmaceutical companies in London.
“Above all, we are thrilled to help oncologists make better therapeutic decisions for their patients and The London Cancer Hub is a great place to make this vision a reality”.