Administrators have been called in to North East cancer testing firm Arquer Diagnostics, where six staff have been made redundant.
The regional heat winner at the North East Business Awards established itself as an innovator of diagnostic kits which could detect bladder cancer. It had received nearly £2m investment, including a £400,000 sum from the North East Innovation Fund, which is managed by Northstar Ventures, in 2019.
Now, administrators from BDO LLP have been appointed to the North East Business & Innovation Centre-based firm. Most recent unaudited accounts for Arquer, which employs about nine people, show it was loss making and had unrelieved tax losses of more than £6m.
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The documents show the firm had assets of more than £2m and net liabilities of £126,735. And bosses said that funding at the end of December 2022 was sufficient to mean the company could at least continue for a further 12 months.
Arquer’s tests use patented technology to detect a protein produced by the expression of the MCM5 (Minichromosome Maintenance Complex Component 5) gene. All cancer cells contain MCM5, but not healthy cells which line organs that produce fluids, therefore if there is a tumour, MCM5 is also present.
Danny Dartnaill, one of the joint administrators said: "Unfortunately, the company’s latest sample test results weren’t as strong as hoped for and further progress would only have been possible with the injection of new investment. As this was not possible, the directors were left with no option but to place the company into administration.
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"However, the joint administrators are confident that there will be interest in the company’s intellectual property from parties who will be able to build upon Arquer’s research to bring new diagnostic tests to the clinical pathway.”
Its first product, Adxbladder, is a urine test that can help identify tumours in patients showing symptoms and for monitoring of recurrent tumours in patients with a history of the disease. In 2020 the tests - which were said to be able to rule out bladder cancer in just a few hours with 99% accuracy - were made available free to the NHS for a time, in order to help doctors clear a backlog of patients awaiting diagnosis or monitoring following Covid disruption in hospitals.
Arquer, which won the Innovation Award at the 2018 Durham, Sunderland and South Tyneside Business Award, said the technology had also shown promise in future diagnosis of prostate and endometrial cancers with products are undergoing clinical validations. The firm had been in collaboration with scientific body the International Bladder Cancer Group (IBCG) and a number of top clinicians in the field from across Europe and the US.
In 2022 the Adxbladder test was included in the European Association of Urology guidelines, as a recommendation for urologists in the follow up of low and intermediate risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. The company said at the time that the move was a milestone that provided urologists with reassurance of the kit's effectiveness.