Chris Thornton is Professor of Fungal Immunology and Director of Impact for Biosciences at the University of Exeter. Chris is also Director of the University spin-out company ISCA Diagnostics Limited.
As an eight-year-old, Chris fell in love with biology, an interest later fuelled by an exceptional A-level teacher, Mr Thomas. Since graduating from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1987, Chris has worked at Oxford, Cambridge and Sheffield Universities, before joining the University of Exeter in 1997, and his appointment as a lecturer in 2003. Chris was recently appointed as Director of Impact for Biosciences, but it is his University spin-out company, ISCA Diagnostics, which Insight is looking at today.
As a ‘bench-to-bedside’ innovator in medical diagnostics, ISCA enables Chris to translate his academic R&D into user-friendly tests for human diseases. The Company’s ground-breaking research and innovation is set to make diagnosis of Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis (IPA), a life-threatening lung disease of immunocompromised patients, quick, accurate, and low-cost.
This devastating disease can develop in patients with weakened immune systems, for example leukaemia and bone marrow transplant patients, following inhalation of air-borne spores of the fungal pathogen Aspergillus. The fungus is abundant in the environment, but is not dangerous to individuals with healthy immune systems.
ISCA Diagnostics’ flagship test is the Aspergillus lateral-flow assay (LFA), a quick, simple, and cheap bedside test that can identify IPA in fifteen minutes. This is a major breakthrough in testing for the condition, which currently can take up to seven days, and which has a mortality rate of up to 95% without timely detection and treatment. Patient prognosis worsens significantly as the disease progresses, and so doctors often treat high-risk patients on the basis of clinical suspicion, which means that already severely sick patients are given toxic and costly anti-fungal drugs when they might not actually need them.
ISCA’s test uses antibody-based technology similar to that found in a pregnancy test, but with fluid taken from the lungs or with blood serum. Fifteen minutes after the sample is applied to the test, a positive or negative result appears in a display window, and shows whether a patient has the disease or not.
The potential impact of ISCA’s quick, non-invasive, diagnostic test on patient care and welfare is impressive. This is quite apart from the huge cost-saving potential for the NHS – the drugs used to treat patients suspected of having IPA, and the additional time spent in a hospital treating the disease, can add an additional £35,000 to patient costs. Chris’s test currently costs £2 per unit, with an aim in the future to reduce the cost to 75 pence, made possible by volume.
Chris says: “I saw an opportunity to take the knowledge and lab skills I had developed in my academic work to benefit the medical world. I have been lucky to be able to collaborate with many doctors and hospital diagnosticians, whose support has been invaluable. They have the patients and I have the technology – it is a great marriage.”
Collaboration with experts across Europe, as well as European Union funding, has been pivotal to Chris’s work. Chris said: “I do have concerns over future projects. I have already noticed that the drive to work with UK academics has been impacted by the UK’s Brexit vote. Working with the UK on projects over a fixed number of years which will fall well within our exit from the EU is risky for project partners, particularly when grants are being assessed by award panels.”
Chris is supported by research scientist and Company employee Genna Davies, whose work Chris has been able to finance through European research funding, collaborating with experts from France, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland. The group is currently working on state-of-the-art antibody-guided PET imaging that allows non-invasive detection of infectious diseases using hospital MRI scanners. The work will soon enter first-in-human clinical trials in Germany.
For the sector’s future, Chris would like to see investment into STEMM apprenticeships, allowing talented young people to step straight into the sciences from school. He also believes that more needs to be done to retain women in science, with females poorly represented after graduation.
Chris says: “Being an academic is challenging. The skills needed are diverse – the ability to teach at the highest level, to fundraise effectively, to undertake world-leading research, to manage student welfare, to speak at conferences – but this career has allowed me academic freedom, and with the spin-out system, I can now direct my own company too.”
https://www.iscadiagnostics.com
