RESEARCH that could eventually lead to hope for millions of lung cancer sufferers is being carried out at the University of York.

Now the woman scientist who believes she may be on the trail of a cure has formed Cizzle Biotechnology - a company which will be asking investors on Wednesday to back it to the tune of £1.5 million.

Dr Dawn Coverley, 39, based at the University of York's biology department, will be asking for the investment at Connect Yorkshire's Investment Forum.

The forum is designed to encourage the backing of fledgling technology companies across Yorkshire.

Dr Coverley, who has teamed up with co-director Dr Justin Ainscough, an expert in the growth of normal mammalian cells at the Department of Medicine in Leeds, hopes to attract the money over two years to pay for another three technicians under the Cizzle banner.

She said: "We have identified a gene which appears to be mutated in lung cancer cells.

"One of the things we want to do in those two years of research and development is to prove that this is the case in lung cancer patients.

"The next step is to develop molecules that recognise and home in on the mutated cells to kill them without damaging normal cells - in other words inhibit the growth of a lung tumour.

"The molecules would also be able to detect lung cancer in its early stages."

Dr Coverley who earned her PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research laboratories in London, did her post doctoral work at the research institute of Cancer Research UK in Cambridge.

She has two fellowships, one from the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine as well as a bioscience enterprise fellowship from Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, with the object of making her research commercially viable.

Her work at York so far has already been partly funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research.

She said: "Other people are trying to achieve the same thing with similar technology, but with other diseases. But our target specifically applies to lung cancer. Each gene for each disease is fundamentally different.

"But I must stress, we are still at a very, very early stage."

Updated: 10:58 Friday, June 17, 2005