00:00Yes, well, the Centre for Cancer Genomics here at the Royal Marsden, it's a new venture
00:05and it complements some of the work that we've already been doing at the Royal Marsden in
00:09clinical diagnostics for cancer.
00:11We already provide the testing for the whole of the North Thames region and indeed people
00:16send samples in from across the country.
00:19We've innovated in liquid biopsies, which means cancer blood testing, and in other areas.
00:24And one aspect of this laboratory will be to expand the cancer blood testing.
00:29We already deliver that for lung cancer, for breast cancer, and now for cancer of a known
00:35primary.
00:36And we've got a number of other indications coming along the line, so it's very much a
00:40growth area.
00:41Much better for patients being able to have a blood test taken rather than a biopsy, faster
00:47results going back to the patients, which means you can get patients on treatment quicker.
00:52That's the first thing we want to do over here.
00:53Composite biomarker testing involves combining information about a patient and their tumour
00:59with artificial intelligence to build the fullest picture of a person's cancer.
01:05The findings will help doctors ensure NHS patients can access clinical trials, more personalised
01:11treatments and can have flexible treatment plans that change as their cancer does.
01:15clinical trials have already shown positive results in using these circulating tumour DNA
01:21blood tests to monitor patients to see whether their cancer is coming back.
01:27The second thing is for innovation.
01:30We're constantly looking to see what's going to come down the line, what's happening over
01:34the next five years.
01:36Horizon scanning from the clinical researchers, we're talking to the doctors who've come back
01:42from their big conferences all around the world, and we're asking what do we need to
01:46deliver for these patients and what's that going to look like in four or five years' time?
01:49We need to prepare for that.
01:51One of the big things on the horizon, I think everybody knows, is AI and how we will be able
01:56to use that in clinical diagnostics.
01:59And I think what that's going to do is signal a change from taking a single test for a patient
02:04instead of just looking for one thing that will tell you what to do with that patient.
02:08We might look at three, four or five different measurements, integrate those together with
02:13an AI score, which will precisely tell us what to do with that patient, not just at the
02:18time of diagnosis, but we will then be able to monitor that patient with blood-based testing
02:22and monitor and change the patient's treatment as we go along.
02:26What the labs here are going to do is set up and enable that.
02:30We're going to create the infrastructure here.
02:32We had obviously support from the charity to create the labs, from the NIHR to fill those
02:39with the equipment you can see behind me.
02:41That equipment is going to take all those different measurements and we're going to work on integrating
02:45that to create those composite biomarker scores, which is what I call them, because it's a composite
02:51of maybe different types of measuring DNA, RNA, protein, whatever it is we need to measure
02:56for that patient, we'll be able to measure it here.
