VATIS UPDATE Article

Strand Life Sciences, India, has begun offering a test called ‘STRAND LB’ that claims to be able to detect traces of a tumour “from a simple blood draw”. Another company MedGenome, India, has also announced the launch of “ONCOTRACK”, another ‘liquid biopsy’ test. “Management of cancer will undergo a massive transformation in India with NGS (next-generation sequencing)-based liquid biopsies… ONCOTRACK is one such offering,” said Sam Santhosh, at MedGenome.

NGS refers to techniques to scan genes and look for mutations that may cause cancer. “STRAND LB can detect tumour DNA traces in as many as 35% of patients with early-stage cancer, going up to 70-90% in patients with locally advanced or metastatic cancer. These figures are on a par with the best in the world,” said Dr. Vijay Chandru, at Strand Life Sciences. These numbers spanned a wide variety of cancer types, including lung, colorectal, breast, and bladder cancer.

According to Dr. Chandru, liquid biopsy tests couldn’t yet be a replacement for traditional biopsies but there were a variety of situations that made them useful – for instance, lung cancer patients who couldn’t afford to part with enough tissue. These are important to determine if their tumours carry mutations in genes such as EGFR, making them eligible for specific treatments. It can also be used to monitor the very same patients for the emergence of resistance to these treatments.