A team of Indian scientists says it has achieved a stunning breakthrough in early cancer diagnosis with a discovery rooted in a contentious segment of cellular biology that, if validated by additional trials, holds vast market potential in a branch of therapeutic medicine worth tens of billions of dollars a year.
The discovery enables the detection of cancer and the stage the disease is in from a simple blood test with virtually 100% accuracy, according to the results of a 1,000-person clinical study described in a forthcoming paper in the peer-reviewed Stem Cell Reviews and Reports, a quarterly journal published by Berlin-based Springer Science + Business Media. The paper was published online on Thursday.
The technique was able to identify 25 different kinds of cancer. Most importantly, in some ways, it was able to detect cancer before the onset of tumour development. As cancer treatments have advanced, deaths from the illness in its early stages have dramatically declined, and a diagnostic tool that can flag cancers early could become a boon to millions who suffer from a deadly illness that also inflicts financial ruin on families.
The test, known as HrC, has been co-developed by Mumbai-based biotechnology firm Epigeneres Biotechnology Pvt. Ltd and Singapore-based Tzar Labs Pte Ltd. Mumbai-based nanotech scientist Vinay Kumar Tripathi and his family are majority shareholders in both companies.