The UK Medical Futures Award for Best National Health Innovation was granted June 14, 2007 to Cardiff University for its novel implementation of the GeneSearch™ System from Veridex LLC.
The awards program is one of the highest profile events on the medical calendar in the U.K. The awards help encourage, support and reward new ideas and advancements in healthcare that can improve people's lives.
The award was for a new surgical service, GeneSearch™ Breast Cancer Intra-operative Diagnosis, pioneered by breast surgeon Professor Robert Mansel and colleagues at the School of Medicine, which introduces a molecular pathology technique into routine surgery and also offers the prospect of significant savings on NHS operations.
Breast cancer affects more than 37,000 U.K. women every year. Cardiff University estimates that the new technique could save up to a third of them from having a second operation. The Cardiff team now aims to promote the service across the NHS.
Launched in Europe in November 2006, the GeneSearch™ BLN Assay is the world's first gene-based diagnostic test designed to detect the spread of breast cancer to the lymph nodes.
About Veridex
Veridex, LLC, a Johnson & Johnson company, develops cancer diagnostic products that will enable earlier disease detection as well as monitoring and therapeutic selection. The company is initially developing two complementary product lines: CellSearch™ assays that identify, enumerate and characterize circulating tumor cells directly from whole blood and GeneSearch™ assays. www.veridex.com