OncoStem Diagnostics - Enabling tailor made therapies for breast cancer
Each year about 1,50,000 women are detected with breast cancer in India. Currently, there are no affordable tests to predict the risk of cancer recurrence thus a majority of early stage (Stage I and II) breast cancer patients undergo chemotherapy to avoid cancer recurrence. As a result, patients with low risk of recurrence are often over-treated and consequently bear various toxic effects of chemotherapy treatment that reduces their quality of life. Additionally, studies have proven that the benefit of chemotherapy in early stage patients is known to be 10-15% suggesting many such patients can be spared conventional chemotherapy.
OncoStem’s flagship product ‘CanAssist-Breast’ can spare potentially over 60,000 breast cancer patients in India and about 1 million patients worldwide every year from the severe side effects and unnecessary costs of chemotherapy. Cancer treatment has continuously evolved over the years. With new research, oncologists have realised that a one-size-fits-all approach to cancer treatment is not conducive. However, there are no affordable, well validated and personalized tests in India to accurately predict the risk of cancer recurrence. OncoStem’s innovative and cost effective ‘CanAssist-Breast’can help clinicians to plan personalized treatment for each patient based on tumor biology.
The risk of cancer recurrence is dependent on tumor type, stage and on the biology of each patient’s tumor. OncoStem Diagnostics’ ‘CanAssist-Breast’ determines the proteomic fingerprint of the tumor. This information is then used by OncoStem’s proprietary machine learning-based algorithm that stratifies patients as ‘low- or high-’ risk for cancer recurrence. Patients classified as ‘high-risk’ would have a greater probability of the cancer recurring than those classified as low-risk. This will help clinicians and the patients to understand the disease better and plan a suitable treatment. Adjuvant chemotherapy treatment of the patient can be customized based on the risk of recurrence.
Technology behind ‘CanAssist-Breast’
OncoStem Diagnostics uses gold standard proteomics based technology called Immunohistochemistry to perform the test. The technology is based on the detection of highly specific and quantitative antigen-antibody reactions that are measured specifically in tumor cells. Immunohistochemistry is a gold standard and time tested technique, which is efficient, lower in cost, easier to perform across the globe.
