EDX Medical Group Plc (AQSE:EDX) Chief Scientific Officer Sir Chris Evans caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss the company’s partnership with the NHS and Cambridge institutions to develop a new rapid digital diagnostic test for pneumonia.
Q1: Chris, EDX Medical has just announced that it is partnering with Cambridge University Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust and the UK Health Security Agency and that is to provide a new pneumonia test. What does the partnership involve?
A1: It is quite interesting actually, it’s more unusual because these are two or three obviously quite serious bodies; NHS, Government, Cambridge Enterprise, Cambridge Foundation, and Addenbrooke’s Hospital.
They are particularly obviously very good organisations, and they approached us to help them develop a very professional consistent version of a pneumonia test, of a rapid digital diagnostic for hospital-acquired pneumonia in particular, based in our Cambridge labs. Obviously, we are right on their doorstep, we have been there for many, many years, I have been operating in Cambridge a long, long time so a lot of these guys know me.
It is a true multifaceted partnership for developing a new test for utilisation by the NHS Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s and hopefully in future the rest of the NHS around the UK.
Q2: How did the partnership come about?
A2: We were approached because we are pretty well known by the laboratories in Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s already. During Covid, for example, we did many, many tens of thousands of very quick, rapid, very accurate PCR tests for students and for other reasons, both in the University of Cambridge and in Addenbrooke’s itself from our Cambridge laboratories. So, we are pretty known, we have the skill set, we have the people, and we have the equipment.
In terms of EDX, as you know, it’s quite a young company but we are very ambitious, we’re very fast moving, and we are developing quite a number of complex digital diagnostic tests.
This partnership, in a way, is part of the current government’s 10-year strategic plan to develop far more digital diagnostic tools to assist the NHS to get more accurate diagnoses of what’s going on so that you can pinpoint exactly the precision medicine treatment you want to give patients. It saves time, it saves money, it saves lives. So, it’s all sensible in terms of the approach.
So yes, they approached us in these discussions, they knew we could do it and we’re right in the middle of doing this right now, of developing this new pneumonia test.
In terms of some of the background, in case you’re not aware, what’s called hospital-acquired pneumonia, you also get community-acquired pneumonia, and these cost the NHS over £1 billion a year in costs. That’s well documented everywhere. So, it’s a significant project here, I think something like 75,000 people last year got hospital-acquired pneumonia and 15,000 sadly die every year so it’s quite a lot of deaths. They also take up over 400,000 NHS bed hours or bed days, and that’s a lot of NHS manpower, NHS beds, which could be obviously used for other purposes as well.
So, I think it’s quite a serious project and we’re delighted that we were chosen to do it. We can do it, we’ll have no issues of putting the whole thing together, it’ll be probably finished later this year. We can run tens and tens of thousands of these from the EDX laboratories in the UK and we hope that this thing will be very successful for the NHS.
Q3: You’ve mentioned earlier that EDX Medical is a new or relatively young company so why would these prestigious organisations partner with EDX?
A3: Well, it’s partly because, remember, I’ve had laboratories for nearly 40 years now in Cambridge. I built the first essential biotech start-up was in Cambridge and I did the second, third, fourth, fifth laboratories down in Babraham, the science park that I helped create down there, and on the main Trinity Science Park and all over Cambridge. So, someone like myself and Mike Hudson, the Chief Executive of EDX, he’s been operating for 35 years there as well, me and Mike have been together for over 45 years doing things so we’re pretty well-known individuals. Quite a lot of my team are well known within the Cambridge area, within the laboratories as well so although we’re young, we’re really an old head on young shoulders, you could say, in terms of bioscience.
We’ve built scores of companies, we’ve built companies worth billions of dollars in Cambridge that have been floated, listed around the world, have been sold. We’ve developed over a billion test units of diagnostic digital tests over our lifetime and careers, from the Cambridge area. So, in a way, I think we’re pretty well-known people, and we can be trusted to do something extremely well.
I’m only interested, by the way, in developing new complex digital diagnostics to solve problems that other people can’t solve, that’s what really excites me. I’m not interested in developing a me-too boring, run of the mill test so we’re looking at the challenges and overcoming the challenges with brand new tests that have great utility and can save many, many lives. We’re good at raising the finance to expand our organisation and deliver the goods and we know how to do this.
Q4: What can investors expect from EDX Medical for the rest of the year?
A4: Well, we’re obviously busy, we’ve got a range of cancer tests that we’re already beginning to sell so we should sell millions of dollars of those tests this year.
As we recently announced earlier this year, our what we call the prostate cancer super test, that’s well into its development and clinical validation phase so that’ll be out next year, that’s progressing throughout the EDX laboratories. In that area, I can’t say too much now, but we had a very recent breakthrough, which, I’ve got to be honest, excited me to spill my tea over my notebook because I knew we were doing it. I knew what we were trying to do, and we seem to have done it very successfully so I’m very, very excited about this thing.
Now, we are not going to be announcing nothing for quite some months because we have to clinically validate the breakthrough, but you’re going to hear about that. You’re going to hear about that this year because it’s going to be too hot to maintain. If it don’t work, then it don’t work, but it’s currently working quite brilliantly, very, very pleased. That’s going to be linked to prostate and some other cancers, it’s a new type of test so very excited.
We recently developed the TC100 testicular cancer test, I think that’s been publicly announced. We launched the test; it’s for sale and some of the tests have been purchased.
Very recently we had a very interesting first day of sales when two doctors in the UK, both rang up from one up north, one down south with a potential testicular cancer patient, boys with lumps, groins, and pain etc. in the region, young boys, young men. They purchased the TC100 test, it was run and for the first boy indeed our test showed that 99% accuracy he’s got testicular cancer. That was then rapidly confirmed by full screens that he did indeed have the tumour. The second boy who had all the same symptoms had nothing. Our test showed he had absolutely no cancer and the scans were carried out anyway to triple check and proved he had nothing. He’d had a set of injuries in his groin, but he certainly didn’t have cancer.
So that was two fabulous 99% accurate results showing exactly what these super tests can do, and we hope to see that happening with far more cancers in future: bowel cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, etc. So that’s what we’re up to and that stuff’s all coming down the track.
Next year, we should have at least 10 of these projects finished and the products MHRA approved, and FDA approved, CE marking where we need it and we will certainly be launching them in the UK at different points, some early on in 2026, others towards the end of 2026.
So, very exciting times ahead I think, and things are looking good so I’m pretty pumped on it.
