Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and metastasis accounts for the vast majority of those deaths. Yet clinicians often have limited access to real-time information about how a patient’s disease is evolving, while traditional tissue biopsies are invasive, costly and difficult to repeat.
Vortex Liquid Biopsy Solutions develops technology to isolate circulating tumour cells from a routine blood sample. The company uses a label-free approach, meaning it can enrich intact tumour cells without relying on biological markers that may be lost as cancer evolves. The goal is to support earlier intervention, better treatment selection and more personalised monitoring over time.
Paul Reeves is Managing Director at Vortex. We spoke about the gap between what liquid biopsy promises and what it currently delivers, why the company focuses on whole cells rather than DNA fragments, and what it takes to build evidence that reflects the diversity of real-world patient populations.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role?
I’m Paul Reeves, Managing Director of Vortex Liquid Biopsy Solutions. I’ve spent much of my career helping innovative healthcare technologies move from the laboratory into real-world use, and today I lead a team that’s working to improve how cancer is detected, monitored and understood.
What motivates me is the potential impact on patients. Cancer affects almost every family in some way, and at Vortex we’re developing technologies that could help clinicians gain more information from a simple blood sample, potentially making cancer monitoring less invasive and more informative.
My role involves bringing together scientists, clinicians, industry partners and investors around a shared goal: accelerating innovation that can ultimately improve patient outcomes. That’s what makes the work both challenging and incredibly rewarding.
How did your company come about and what was the motivation behind it?
Vortex was founded to address a longstanding challenge in cancer care: how to reliably access and study the cells that are responsible for cancer spreading throughout the body.
While liquid biopsy has gained significant attention in recent years, many approaches focus on analysing fragments of tumour DNA found in the bloodstream. At Vortex, our focus is on circulating tumour cells, or CTCs. These are the actual cancer cells that break away from a primary tumour and travel through the blood, playing a central role in metastasis, which is responsible for the vast majority of cancer-related deaths.
The motivation behind the company was to develop a better way of isolating these extremely rare cells. Vortex’s technology uses a label-free approach, meaning we can enrich intact tumour cells without relying on biological markers that may be lost as cancer evolves. This opens up opportunities to study the disease in greater detail and potentially provide clinicians and researchers with more meaningful insights.
What started as a scientific innovation has evolved into a broader mission: helping accelerate the transition to more personalised cancer care. By making it easier to access and analyse tumour cells from a simple blood sample, we hope to support earlier intervention, better treatment selection and improved monitoring of disease over time.
Today, that original motivation remains unchanged. We are working with clinical, academic and industry partners around the world to unlock the full potential of circulating tumour cells and improve outcomes for people affected by cancer.
Can you describe your company’s mission and values?
Our mission is to unlock the clinical and scientific potential of circulating tumour cells to help improve outcomes for people affected by cancer.
We believe that understanding cancer requires access to the cells that drive the disease. By enabling researchers and clinicians to isolate and study these rare cells from a simple blood sample, we’re working to make cancer monitoring less invasive, more informative and ultimately more personalised.
At the heart of our mission is the conviction that better insights lead to better decisions. Whether supporting cancer research, clinical trials or future diagnostic applications, our goal is to provide technologies that help advance precision oncology and bring meaningful benefits to patients.
The values that guide us are rooted in scientific excellence, collaboration and impact. We work closely with clinicians, researchers and industry partners because we recognise that solving complex healthcare challenges requires a collective effort. We are also driven by innovation, constantly looking for better ways to tackle difficult problems, while maintaining a strong focus on quality, integrity and patient benefit.
Ultimately, everything we do is motivated by the desire to contribute to a future where cancer can be detected, monitored and treated more effectively, giving patients the best possible chance of positive outcomes.
What are some of the most pressing social issues that your company is working to address through its technology?
One of the most pressing challenges we’re addressing is the global burden of cancer and the need for more personalised, less invasive and more equitable approaches to healthcare.
Despite significant advances in treatment, cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. A major challenge is that clinicians often have limited access to real-time information about how a patient’s disease is evolving, while traditional tissue biopsies can be invasive, costly and difficult to repeat.
Our technology is designed to help address this by enabling the isolation of circulating tumour cells from a routine blood sample. These cells can provide valuable information about a patient’s cancer, creating opportunities for better monitoring, improved treatment selection and a deeper understanding of how disease changes over time.
Beyond the technology itself, we are deeply committed to ensuring that healthcare innovation benefits all patients. Historically, some clinical studies have struggled to adequately represent the diversity of the populations affected by disease. Through our ongoing clinical collaborations, we are working to evaluate our technology across diverse patient populations and healthcare settings, helping to generate evidence that is more representative of the real world.
We also actively engage Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) partners when designing studies. We believe the patient voice should help shape research from the outset, ensuring that innovations address genuine clinical needs and focus on outcomes that matter most to patients and their families.
While our current focus is oncology, we see significant potential for our technology in other areas of unmet clinical need. For example, the ability to isolate rare cells from blood could have important applications in women’s health, including conditions such as endometriosis and certain gynaecological cancers, where earlier diagnosis and better disease monitoring could make a meaningful difference to patient outcomes.
Ultimately, our goal is not simply to develop a new technology. It is to help create a future where healthcare is more personalised, more accessible and more representative, enabling better outcomes for patients regardless of their background or circumstances.
How does your company measure the impact of its work in creating positive change?
We measure our impact through a combination of scientific, clinical and societal outcomes.
From a scientific perspective, we look at how our technology is advancing cancer research and enabling new discoveries through collaborations with leading academic, clinical and industry partners. Success for us means generating robust evidence that demonstrates the value of circulating tumour cells in understanding disease and guiding future care.
Clinically, we’re focused on whether our technology can provide actionable insights that support better patient management and accelerate the development of more personalised treatments. The progress of our clinical studies and the quality of data they generate are important indicators of impact.
We also measure success by how inclusive our research is. We work to ensure our studies involve diverse patient populations and healthcare settings, and we actively engage Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) partners to help shape research around real patient needs.
Finally, some of the most meaningful measures are the opportunities we create for future patients. Whether that’s supporting earlier detection, improving treatment monitoring, or exploring applications in areas such as women’s health, our goal is to develop technologies that have a genuine and lasting impact on healthcare.
Ultimately, we judge our success not just by the technology we develop, but by the difference it can make to patients, clinicians and researchers.
In your opinion, what impact will technology have in creating a better future?
I believe technology has the power to create a better future when it helps us make more informed decisions, improves access to healthcare and tackles challenges that were previously difficult to address.
In healthcare, we’re already seeing technology transform how diseases are detected, monitored and treated. Advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and liquid biopsy are enabling a more personalised approach to medicine, where treatments can be tailored to the individual rather than the average patient.
However, technology alone isn’t enough. The greatest impact comes when innovation is developed responsibly, with patients and end users at the centre, and when the benefits are accessible to diverse populations rather than a select few.
At Vortex, we see technology as an enabler. By helping clinicians and researchers access new biological insights from a simple blood sample, we hope to contribute to earlier intervention, more effective treatments and ultimately better outcomes for patients.
More broadly, I’m optimistic that technology will continue to play a major role in tackling some of society’s biggest challenges, from healthcare and sustainability to improving equality of access. The key is ensuring that innovation is guided by purpose and focused on delivering real-world benefit.
What advice do you have for other companies looking to use technology for good and create a positive impact in the world?
My advice would be to start with the problem, not the technology.
It’s easy to become excited by a new innovation, but the most impactful companies are those that focus on solving a genuine unmet need. If you can clearly demonstrate how your technology improves people’s lives, everything else becomes much easier, from building partnerships to attracting investment.
I’d also encourage companies to engage end users early and often. In healthcare, that means involving clinicians, patients and public contributors in the development process, rather than designing solutions in isolation. The insights gained from those conversations are often just as valuable as the technology itself.
Collaboration is another key factor. Many of society’s biggest challenges are too complex for any one organisation to solve alone. Working with academic institutions, healthcare providers, industry partners and community groups can accelerate progress and maximise impact.
Finally, be patient and stay focused on the long-term goal. Creating meaningful change rarely happens overnight. Success comes from consistently delivering evidence, building trust and remaining committed to the mission, even when progress feels incremental.
For us, technology is not the end goal, it’s a tool. The real goal is improving lives, and the companies that keep that purpose at the centre of everything they do are the ones most likely to create lasting positive impact.
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Vortex measures impact through a combination of scientific, clinical and societal outcomes, including the progress of clinical studies, the inclusivity of research across diverse patient populations, and patient and public involvement in shaping research priorities. The company is also exploring applications beyond oncology, including women’s health conditions such as endometriosis.
You can find out more at vortexctc.ai.
