Methylation profiling of cell-free DNA is opening new possibilities for detecting cancer at its earliest, pre-symptomatic stages, offering a potential breakthrough in how and when disease is found.
Rob Neely co-founded Tagomics, a biotechnology company that will translate work from his lab into a diagnostic test that enables the early detection of cancer.
Credit: Anthony Smith
In June 2025, Tagomics was awarded £860,000 in funding from Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst programme to accelerate the development of a diagnostic test for the early detection of colorectal cancer. The funding will support a pilot study with the NHS and further development of the company’s multiomic platform, which is designed to identify subtle molecular signals of cancer using enriched epigenetic and genetic markers from a single blood sample.
As part of the initiative, a 250-patient clinical study led by Arash Assadsangabi at Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust will evaluate the test’s performance in real-world settings. This work builds on a collaboration with the Northern Care Alliance Research Collection and an established partnership with Agilent Technologies.
Drug Discovery News spoke with Robert Neely, Associate Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Birmingham and co-founder of Tagomics, to learn how this research could help shift cancer detection earlier, when treatment is most effective.
What is the Interlace™ platform and how does it work?
Interlace™ is Tagomics’ platform for streamlined multiomic analysis. It enables genomic and epigenomic profiling, optimized for a single cell-free DNA (cfDNA) sample, using as little as 1 ng of DNA. Built on Tagomics’ proprietary enzymatic method for DNA methylation profiling, Interlace enriches and analyzes unmethylated regions of the genome without damaging or chemically converting DNA bases.
Looking ahead, we envision Interlace™ as a screening tool for multi-cancer early detection.
– Robert Neely
The platform integrates epigenomic data with whole-genome sequencing or targeted panels, such as Agilent’s SureSelect Comprehensive Genomic Profiling (CGP) cancer assay, for a simultaneous, multiomic readout. Since the workflow is assumption-free and genome-wide, the platform is ideally suited for the discovery of novel, multiomic biomarkers.
How does this tool accelerate the detection of cancers compared to existing methods?
The epigenomic technology inside Interlace uses genome-wide enrichment of unmethylated DNA for analysis. Since only 20–30 percent of CpG sites in the genome are unmethylated, this approach enables highly efficient and scalable profiling. Compared to traditional base-conversion chemistries, Interlace requires approximately ten times less sequencing, making it a powerful platform for both biomarker discovery and clinical application.
This has two major implications for early cancer detection: first, it enhances biomarker discovery through a more comprehensive, multiomic approach to epigenomic profiling; second, it helps eliminate the gap between discovery and clinical validation. The result is a more scalable, accessible diagnostic tool that better reflects the complexity of disease biology across diverse patient populations.
Are there any similar technologies currently in use by the NHS?
There is growing excitement around liquid biopsies for both early cancer detection and monitoring recurrence after treatment. Strong evidence now shows that the absence of circulating tumour DNA in a patient’s blood following treatment can indicate a cure, giving clinicians the confidence to end potentially harmful therapies early and provide patients reassurance in their recovery. The NHS is actively involved in trials to evaluate such technologies, including a recently announced lung cancer test co-developed by the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Guardant Health.
A sensitive and specific test for early cancer detection could be transformative for the health service and its patients. Current NHS trial programs are exploring DNA methylation as an indicator of early-stage disease. While this test can’t be used routinely now, partially due to the need for greater sensitivity for the earliest stages of cancer development, this pioneering work is fueling a wave of innovation. Many companies and healthcare providers are now looking to multiomics approaches to provide more sensitive and specific diagnostics for early disease detection.
Why was colorectal cancer chosen as the focus for this pilot?
We’re focusing on areas where our platform can deliver the greatest impact for patients. Tagomics’ epigenomic technology specifically targets unmethylated DNA, and the loss of DNA methylation is a well-established prognostic marker in colorectal and gastric cancers. This makes colorectal cancer a strong candidate for our multiomic blood test, which has the potential to significantly improve early detection compared to current methods.
What do you hope to learn from the 250-patient pilot study?
This pilot study will help us evaluate how Interlace performs using real-world samples collected in a colorectal cancer clinic. Our primary goal is to assess its effectiveness for the early detection of colorectal cancer in a clinical setting. We also aim to better understand how clinicians might use the test in practice and identify where it can deliver the greatest impact for patients.
What are the longer-term applications for Interlace beyond this pilot?
Following this pilot, the next steps in our colorectal cancer program are clinical validation and utility studies, where we’ll demonstrate how Interlace can improve patient outcomes in the clinic.
However, Interlace is a unique tool that makes assumption-free, multiomic profiling accessible to scientific labs across the globe. Its chemistry is ideally suited to working with the minute amounts of cfDNA we can typically isolate from blood samples and we’re looking to broaden its application in this setting, in the future.
Looking ahead, we envision Interlace as a screening tool for multi-cancer early detection. Today, around 90 percent of cancer patients in the UK are diagnosed only after symptoms appear. This is a failure of current diagnostic testing, and as a scientist developing molecular tests, I know we can do better than this. We must move towards earlier, molecular-level detection of disease before patients become symptomatic. We already have the tools to do this, but putting them into practice is a formidable challenge.
What role did Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst funding play in accelerating this project?
Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst funding has given us the chance to address the knotty problem of early colorectal cancer diagnosis, forming part of our ongoing efforts to demonstrate the broader applicability of our platform across cancer types, following our pilot study in lung cancer. Beyond this, the grant also supports key development milestones, including adapting the platform specifically for colorectal cancer, scaling manufacturing of Interlace kits, and generating essential pilot data to guide future studies. These are critical steps for Tagomics as we expand the clinical utility and reach of our technology.
Tagomics is collaborating with Agilent, the NHS, and the Northern Care Alliance Research Collection biobank. How did these partnerships come about, and how critical have they been in developing and validating the Interlace platform?
Agilent has supported Tagomics through their Early-Stage Partnership programme. We’ve been working closely with their team to integrate SureSelect reagents, particularly the CGP Cancer assay, into our epigenomic workflow to build the Interlace platform.
Our partnership with the Northern Care Alliance began in Tagomics’ early days, starting with a lung cancer pilot study. The current colorectal cancer collection is a direct continuation of that collaboration. They have been fantastic in coordinating sample collection, biobanking, and helping us to build links with NHS clinicians, like Arash Assadsangabi, who is supporting our colorectal cancer study. These collaborations have been essential in both developing and validating Interlace in real-world clinical settings.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.