Macmillan has made its first venture capital investment, backing a pioneering Cambridge-based company making home-based blood tests that could save the lives of cancer patients who catch infections.
The £100,000 investment is the first to emerge from Macmillan Cancer Support’s new £3.5 million fund and will help to take 52North Health’s NeutroCheck device to trials this summer.
The device tests for life-threatening neutropenic sepsis, which can develop quickly from even minor infections because people receiving chemotherapy treatments have impaired immune systems. It is to be tested in patients receiving treatment at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
If it secured regulatory approval, the device may save the NHS tens of millions of pounds, 52North said. At present as many as 40 per cent of patients with
