World Cancer Day 2025: the UCLB spinouts bringing hope to millions

Fighting cancer is among medicine’s biggest challenges, and several UCLB spinouts are rising to meet that challenge by bringing to market groundbreaking treatments and diagnostic technologies born out of UCL research. 

World Cancer Day is an opportunity to reflect on the difference these academics and their spinout businesses are making. These ventures are not only advancing scientific knowledge and improving patient care, they are also driving economic growth and creating jobs.   

Endomag  

Endomag’s mission is to revolutionise breast cancer staging. They use magnetic technology to eliminate the need for radioactivity during breast cancer staging procedures. Their system allows surgeons to precisely locate and remove cancerous tissue, improving both patient safety and surgical efficiency. Endomag was recently purchased by Hologic for $300m, and last year marked its 500,000th patient.  

Read our Endomag case study here.  

Autolus   

Through cutting-edge technologies such as CAR-T cell therapy, Autolus aims to harness the power of the body’s immune system to target and destroy cancer cells. With a focus on precision and efficacy, Autolus’s therapies hold the promise of offering new hope to patients battling various forms of cancer.  

Autolus recently delivered highly promising results in treating patients with an aggressive blood cancer through a new chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy.  Following this, the US FDA, approved Autolus’ Aucatzyl (obecabtagene autoleucel) gene therapy for adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. 

Read about Autolus’ recent success here.

Odin Vision 

Odin Vision (now acquired by Olympus) spun out of research at UCL Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional Surgical Sciences and the department of Computer Science. It uses an AI model to help detect and characterise polyps in the gastro-intestinal tract during endoscopy procedures. The product, CADDIE, is now widely used by clinicians to assist in detecting abnormal polyps, helping to identify the presence of early-stage colorectal cancer – crucial in enabling much more effective treatment of the disease.  

Novalgen 

This clinical-stage immuno-oncology company strives to create ground-breaking therapies that empower the body’s immune system to combat cancer and other related diseases.   

The company recently shared promising findings from the NVG-111-101, a First in Human, Phase I clinical study showing positive responses in 58% of patients with relapsed refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) across both combination and monotherapy regimens, durable to 24 months.  

With a pipeline of new therapies being developed and being taken through early and mid-stage clinical trials, we can expect even more exciting cancer breakthroughs from our spinouts over the coming years.