INDIA – Vedanta’s BALCO Medical Centre (BMC), one of India’s leading cancer hospitals, and Anuva, a genomics biotech company with a center in India and backed by a UK-based hub have announced a strategic partnership to build a Cancer Genomics Biobank for cancer research in India.
Anuva and BMC intend to use this cancer bio/data bank for clinical research in order to identify relevant insights for cancer precision medicine applications in India.
According to the companies, the collaboration capitalizes on both organizations’ strengths, including BALCO Medical Centre’s clinical expertise and Anuva’s biobanking and genomic expertise.
A cancer-focused bio/data bank aims to help both organizations accelerate discoveries by combining biological factors with background risk factors at the population level in order to identify the critical genes that drive cancer.
The resulting knowledge is expected to improve understanding of how genetic variants influence cancer and, as a result, increase the efficacy of diagnosis and treatment.
Anuva describes itself as a translational research company with a mission to create the most diverse genomic bio/data bank of Asian populations for research and development.
It is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in India, Dubai, Boston, and the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, it claims that its cohorts and biorepository enable follow-on clinical and translational studies, which greatly expand drug development opportunities.
BMC is the flagship initiative of the Vedanta Medical Research Foundation (VMRF), a non-profit organization founded by Vedanta Resources and Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd (BALCO) to help prevent cancer.
In another development in the cancer space, US President Joe Biden has announced an ambitious plan to reduce cancer deaths in the United States, which is the country’s second leading cause of death after heart disease.
Despite advances in life extension and life-saving, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, trailing only heart disease.
The president last month announced the creation of a new agency, ARPA-H, Advanced Research Projects Agencies for Health in a major policy speech in Boston.
ARPA-H will have a single goal: to drive breakthroughs in the prevention, detection, and treatment of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and others.
Biden’s cancer “moonshot” initiative
President Biden stated that his cancer “moonshot” initiative will encourage research into multi-cancer early-detection tests.
He emphasized a government-funded clinical trial that will investigate the effectiveness of various types of early-screening tests.
The hope, according to Biden, is that a tool will be developed that will help cut cancer deaths in the United States in half within the next 25 years.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 600,000 people die from cancer in the United States each year.
Experts say that detecting cancer early is one of the most effective ways to save lives. However, with the exception of a few cancers in the breasts, prostate, and lungs, few cancers have tests that can do so.
A few companies have entered the market to detect more cancers. Grail, a Silicon Valley-based biotechnology start-up that has developed the Galleri test, is one of the most advanced, according to biotechnology experts.
The company’s test is based on the basic principle of detecting DNA released into the bloodstream by tumor cells as they die and replicate.
According to Josh Ofman, Grail’s president, the Galleri test detects markers on DNA shed by tumor cells and feeds that data into a machine-learning algorithm that can detect whether cancer is present and in which organ.
The Galleri test can detect more than 50 cancers at an early stage and can be bought for US$949. The FDA has not yet approved the tests, though they are actively seeking approval, according to Ofman.
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