India Biotech start-up develops test to predict cancers

New Delhi: Shedding lights on a technology that is expected to save millions of people who are suffering from various cancers, an India based biotechnology initiative claimed the test it has developed can detect cancers at its very early stage.

Mumbai-based Epigeneres Biotechnology and Singapore-based Tzar Labs, both led by nanotech scientist Vinay Kumar Tripathi and his family, have published their findings claiming 100 per cent efficacy in a peer-reviewed reviewed journal out of Berlin.

Dr Tripathi's sons Ashish and Anish, who are involved in the management of the two companies, told NDTV that their trial was able to identify 25 different kinds of cancer in a 1,000-person clinical study and solved one of the biggest challenges with the disease - detecting it in time for treatment.

"We intend to bring this technology to India first and our aim is to have it introduced by the end of the year. This is of course something that needs regulatory approval and we are talking to the right parties in the country," Ashish Tripathi said.

Marked by a simple blood test followed by molecular analysis, the family has decided to name the procedure HrC after Dr Tripathi's son-in-law and former high-profile Mumbai police officer Himanshu Roy who died by suicide in 2018 fighting with cancer.

Our technology can detect any type of cancer. There are around 180 types of cancers that are known to man. Twenty-five is mentioned (in the first published paper) because those were the number of cancers that were covered in the clinical trial," Ashish Tripathi said.

His brother Anish Tripathi said it was very easy to take the test and it could detect signs of cancer years before the symptoms show up. It currently takes 3-4 days to get the results but automation advancements can bring it down to 2 days, he said.

"Most tests are invasive. This is a very simple test. You go for a blood test, it's non-invasive. You give a sample of 5 ml of your blood. And we run a test on that," Anish Tripathi said.

Asked about pricing, they said, "We are going to keep it extremely low. That's the ethos of the company. We want this test to be made available to every individual and we want it to be affordable. The ambition is a world where all of us just need to do the HrC test just once a year and we will catch cancer at Stage 1 or before."

Ashish and Anish are brothers of best-selling author Amish Tripathi, who hailed their breakthrough on Twitter.

Ashish and Anish Tripathi said more global clinical trials are planned for their procedure and they would like to offer the HrC test under the brand of their companies.