Prenostics has been a lifetime in the making.
Our Founding Story
As a professor of cancer research at the University of Oxford and a practicing oncologist, Sarah has worked for more than two decades to challenge the perception that cancer is unavoidable.
Her research revealed a new biomarker of precancer, a way of detecting the disease years in advance of it manifesting in the body.
This led to the launch of the Prenostics test, a blood test that identifies precancers.
During my career I have witnessed the tragic deaths of so many incredible people to cancer. This has driven me to shift my research to prevention, improving the way we foresee and manage cancer.
Sarah Blagden FRCP, PhD Professor of Medical Oncology
Our Team
Sarah Blagden
Sarah is co-Founder and CEO of Prenostics, a pioneer in precancer detection. Blagden has a 25 year track-record of cancer research and practice and is a Professor of Oncology and Research Lead at the University of Oxford. She is an international expert on cancer research and RNA biology and leads the UK in conducting studies of new cancer preventives such as vaccines and therapeutics. Prenostics is the product of Blagden’s ground-breaking research exploring how normal cells develop into cancer and how this can be prevented.
The ability to know where and when we’ll encounter risk and be empowered to do something to minimise or avoid it, is a paradigm shift in the way we manage our health.
Stephen Cryan, MBA International Business
Stephen Cryan
Steve is co-founder and director at Prenostics. He began his career in consulting and banking in the United States, before moving to Italy and attaining an MBA in international business from SDA Bocconi University in Milan. After Bocconi he worked for Ferrari and Maserati and then began what is now 20 years of working in senior roles across a variety of start-ups in a variety of industries in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including early involvement with the founders of the disruptive US diagnostic testing company BioIQ. His focus areas have traditionally been strategy, partnerships and alliances, and international business development.
James Chettle
James has worked at Prenostics since late 2023. He's also a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Professor Sarah Blagden at the University of Oxford, where he researches the role of the LARP family of RNA binding proteins in tumorigenesis and cancer progression. James studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and later earned his PhD in virology and immunology. His research expertise lies in RNA binding proteins and their critical roles in driving metabolism and altering the tumour immune microenvironment. This work is pivotal in understanding the intricate interactions within cancer cells and their surrounding environments, aiming to uncover novel mechanisms that could lead to better cancer treatment strategies, with the ultimate goal of enhancing early intervention and improving patient outcomes.
Seeing something I doubted was possible within my lifetime come to fruition is amazing enough; To be able to be involved in helping to bring it to the world, and save countless people's lives, is indeed a rare privilege.
Lyndal Hesterberg, PhD
Our Team
Lyndal K Hesterberg
Lyndal received his PhD in biochemistry in 1980 and has over 40 years’ experience in clinical diagnostics, leading teams that have brought more than a hundred products to market. A seasoned and pragmatic executive with a strong technical background and a passion for improving patient care, Lyndal has a well established track record of turning scientific visions into successful, commercial products. He’s successfully guided multiple start-ups from research concept through LDT development into a commercial CLIA lab product on time and on budget. These products have included multiple diagnostic modalities: nucleic acid based tests (Next Gen Sequencing, PCR, SNP's) and multiplexed protein immunoassays.
Ellen Goldberg
Ellen is founder and co-president of CHORD Consulting Services, a firm that provides product strategy and marketing consulting to companies driving step-change improvements in health care. A data-driven healthcare innovator with a passion for improving treatment decisions with high quality, individualized, clinically-actionable information, Ellen has a proven track record in creating new markets and driving ground-breaking products from concept to standard-of-care. She holds an MBA as well as a BS and MS in Chemistry and is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Roman Fischer
Roman is an associate professor at the Target Discovery Institute (TDI) and Centre of Medicines Discovery (CMD) at the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. He also leads two proteomics focused laboratories; the Discovery Proteomics Facility (DisPro) and the Clinical Proteomics Group (CPG). DisPro engages in fundamental research collaborations involving protein-protein interactions, deep proteomes and PTM analysis. In the Clinical Research Group, Roman focuses on his own research into the technology driven disciplines of spatial and single cell proteomics as well as high-throughput proteomics.
Maria Chatzou-Dunford
Dr. Maria C. Dunford holds a PhD in Biomedicine, MSc in Bioinformatics and BSc in Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics. She is a biotech innovator and expert in bioinformatics, medical informatics and high performance computing (HPC). She is also a passionate entrepreneur and has founded two companies - Innovation Forum Barcelona and the Techstars-backed Lifebit. As a researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation, in Barcelona, Spain, she designed and deployed tools and methods that facilitate the analysis of Big Biomedical Data, allow for biological discoveries, and promote personalised medicine. She was also part of the developing team of Nextflow, a programming framework that is revolutionising the computational analysis of genomic data.
Jay Zhang
Dr. Zhang earned his MD and PhD in China from Tongji Medical University and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College and has received multiple grants and awards such as the Khalifa Scholar Award while studying cancer genomics for over 22 years. After a research fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering (2002-2008), he completed his residency at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and joined MD Anderson Cancer Center. Currently, Dr. Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology with a secondary appointment at the Department of Genomic Medicine working on lung cancer medical oncology, cancer genomics, and immunogenomics.