About ManTRa Diagnostics
Resistance to treatment
Solid tumours have different amounts of oxygen and low levels (hypoxia) are associated with resistance to treatment and a poor prognosis. Around half of solid tumours will be hypoxic, which reduces the efficacy of surgery, radiotherapy, and many chemotherapeutic agents. Conversely, there is likely to be an enriched population with low tumour hypoxia with increased efficacy.
There is currently no way to measure the level of hypoxia in tumours in routine clinical practice
ManTRa DX has developed tumour-site-specific gene expression signatures to assess hypoxia which has the potential to deliver major advances in personalised cancer medicine. The signatures can be used to stratify patients for treatment and as a mechanism to direct therapy choices.
Meet our team
ManTRa Diagnostics is led by co-founders:
Professor Catharine West and Joely Irlam
Joely Irlam
Co-founder/Project Manager
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Joely has +25 years’ cancer research experience (Christie Hospital, UoM) (30 publications). Contributed to closed aseptic T-cell transfection/expansion systems, forming the basis of future CAR-T cell therapies. 15-years developing/validating/delivering hypoxia-associated biomarkers. Technical expert in clinical biomarker platform discovery, spearheading commercialisation of ManTRa’s technologies to deliver genomic tests for personalised cancer treatments and improved patient outcomes.
Professor Catharine West
Co-founder/Scientific Lead
PROFESSOR OF RADIATION BIOLOGY
AND CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER
Catharine launched the international Radiogenomics consortium. She is an international key opinion leader (328 publications, ~£61M research funding), with an international track-record in developing hypoxia-associated biomarkers.
Awards include:
2016 Association for Radiation Research Weiss Medal.
2017 European Radiation Research Society Bacq & Alexander Award
2018 Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists.
External advisors
David Gokhale
Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine
Principal Clinical Scientist and Technical Team Manager – Innovation & Development
Professor Rob Bristow
Director of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre
Interested in novel clinical trials that intensify cancer therapy to prostate cancer patients whose tumours harbour hypoxic sub-regions.
Dr. Stephen Little
Successful career in fields of personalised medicine and molecular diagnostics, within Celltech, AstraZeneca, founded DxS (successfully
acquired by QIAGEN), founded Premaitha Health (now Yourgene PLC).
Dr. Jan Taylor
Bioinformatics Lead at North-West Genomics
+20 years of bioinformatics experience.
Dr. Guy Betts
Consultant Histopathologist
Validated our H&N signature during his PhD studies and has continued to work with us providing expertise in pathology to ensure any biopsy material we measure contains tumour material.
Clinical advisory group (Christie NHS)
Professor Peter Hoskin
Consultant Clinical Oncologist
Professor Ananya Choudhury
Chair and Honorary Consultant in Clinical Oncology
Dr. David Thomson
Consultant Clinical Oncologist
Project Partners
Dr. Paul Docherty
Business Development Director
+20 years’ sales experience within the industry (instrumentation, reagents and kits for research and diagnostic assays). Co-founder of genomic CRO and biotech company, Ex5 genomics.
Bhavika Patel
Technical Director
Extensive research experience including AstraZeneca (5-years), Hematogenix, Hologic, PPD, and Ex5 Genomics.
Specialist in target validation, biomarker discovery, efficacy assessment in oncology, clinical testing and diagnostic testing, leading CDx, LDT and RUO development projects. Experienced CAP/CLIA supervisor. PD and BP are supported by an extensive team experienced in regulatory affairs, software development, and assay-development.
