Award Title: Cancer Biomarker Centre
Funder: Cancer Research UK

Abstract: The MCCBS has continually expanded since 2003 to currently >107 staff sited within one operational and six research teams. The proposals begin with an overall introduction and follows with strategy and research documents. The strategy document outlines the original MCCBS concept and the build of a holistic cancer biomarker centre designed to be world leading in support of cancer precision medicine; the Research document is subdivided into five workstreams, two on our focus of lung cancer, that describe past, ongoing and future research.  
The strategy document reports the MCCBS outputs over the past five years summarising our overall goals and philosophy, our past achievements in both exploratory and regulatory biomarker research and our response to the previous quinquennial review. We describe our approaches to multidisciplinary team work, patient relevant models (mice and cultures) to support treatment selection, and our intellectual input to clinical trial designs and all procedural steps leading from a proposed collaboration through to sample management, biomarker analysis conducted to Good Laboratory Practice standards and data interpretation.  We precis highlight exemplars of our research ranging from ctDNA assays for clinical decision making to the development of a visualisation tool to support a virtual molecular tumour board. We describe how the Centre interacts with academics, Pharma and Biotech and how it will develop and expand further in the coming quinquenium including the relocation to the new Paterson Building into the bespoke biomarker centre facility that we have designed.  
The Research Workstreams capture the scope of our activity that ranges from basic studies of lung cancer biology to biomarker analyses on Phase I –III clinical trials.  A common theme running through each workstream is our internationally leading expertise in liquid biopsies. 
Workstream 1 describes our preclinical and clinical studies of Small Cell Lung Cancer, with Section A focusing on our novel circulating tumour cell patient derived models (CDX) as a platform for translational research. Studies of phenotypic diversity, acquired chemoresistance, experimental medicine collaborations with Biotech and Pharma and mechanisms of metastasis notably particular vasculogenic mimicry are also reported alongside the utility of liquid biopsies. 
Workstream 2 on Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, reports our contribution to the national TRACERx consortium on tumour evolution, mapping CTC genomes from surgery to relapse. Our early work and future plans for liquid biopsies to support minimal disease monitoring and early detection are also described.  
Workstream 3 summarises the Centre’s Clinical Trials and Biomarkers Portfolio (55 trials/studies ongoing or in planning across most tumour types), highlighting our flagship TARGET platform on ctDNA profiling to support clinical decision making at our monthly molecular tumour board to match patient to phase I trials and our progress qualifying circulating biomarkers to optimise use of anti-angiogenic therapies. 
Workstream 4 describes our enabling biomarker technologies including development of blood and tumour assays based on nucleic acids and cells and proteins, as well as the setup of our new tumour immunology and inflammation monitoring laboratory.  
Workstream 5 reviews selected ongoing and new collaborations across the Manchester Cancer Research Centre and in national consortia, where our expertise add value to colleagues’ translational and clinical research programs; including melanoma, pancreas cancer, colorectal cancer, cancer of unknown primary, prostate cancer, and neuroendocrine cancers of the upper GI tract.


Research Activity Codes: 2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS;4.1 DISCOVERY AND PRECLINICAL TESTING OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES;4.2 EVALUATION OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES;4.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (DETECTION)
Health Categories: CANCER AND NEOPLASMS