PrecisionLife TRANSCEND Project Wins EIC Award to Detect and Treat Endometriosis
OXFORD, UK – 20 February 2025 – PrecisionLife has been awarded a €2.5m non-dilutive grant by the European Innovation Council (EIC) for its TRANSCEND project, to more rapidly and accurately triage and treat patients with endometriosis. The project is based on PrecisionLife’s unique insights into the biological mechanisms underpinning this complex chronic disease.
PrecisionLife will develop and clinically validate a rapid and non-invasive precision medicine test to evaluate a patient’s risk of endometriosis and the mechanisms underpinning their disease. It will also enable testing of repurposing drug candidates already identified by PrecisionLife in targeted groups of at-risk patients.
Endometriosis is a debilitating and complex disease, which affects 10% (190 million) of reproductive age women and girls globally. The symptoms are varied and unpredictable, often including severe, life-impacting pain, depression, infertility, and increased risk of ovarian cancer. There is currently no way to screen for endometriosis risk and it takes 8-10 years on average to diagnose, only confirmed through painful, invasive and expensive laparoscopic surgery.
The PrecisionLife test will enable rapid differential triage of patients presenting with deep pelvic pain using a simple, non-invasive buccal swab. Its results will allow clinicians to quickly evaluate an individual’s lifetime risk of endometriosis and several other diseases with similar symptoms to enable accurate referral to the correct specialist. The same test will also uncover the underlying mechanisms causing their form of the disease to help identify and prescribe effective treatments.
Clinical validation of the test’s predictive accuracy and the efficacy of the repurposing drug candidates, will provide new treatment options for patients, a reimbursement route for the test, and enable the design of smaller, more targeted clinical trials to accelerate the approval of new drug treatments. All of this will help patients get diagnosed quicker and more accurately and access more effective treatment options as rapidly as possible.
“We're delighted to accept this grant and thank the EIC for recognizing the urgent need to provide better diagnostic tools and treatments for endometriosis. Project TRANSCEND will positively impact the lives of the 10 million women suffering from this massively debilitating and painful condition in Europe and many more beyond,” said Steve Gardner, CEO of PrecisionLife. “By improving the speed and accuracy of diagnosis, we will significantly enhance patients' quality of life and reduce the physical and emotional burden of the disease, whilst saving health systems many thousands of dollars per patient.”
PrecisionLife is one of 71 companies selected for the round of EIC funding out of more than 1,200 submitted proposals, in what was the most competitive funding round since the launch of the Accelerator under Horizon Europe in 2021. For further information, read the news article: EIC Accelerator – 71 companies selected in the most competitive funding round so far.
