Datar Genetics Limited (Datar), the country’s foremost centre for molecular and genetic analysis has recently announced a strategic collaboration with Apollo Hospitals Educational and Research Foundation (AHERF) to establish a liquid biopsy platform for detecting glioblastomas (GBM), one of the most aggressive malignant brain tumours in humans.

According to the data issued in May, 2015 by the National Cancer Registry Program of the India Council of Medical Research (ICMR), cancer has become the biggest cause of death in India with 1,300 deaths daily and close to 5 lakh deaths per annum.

The data collected shows that an estimated 6 per cent rise in mortality rate due to cancer from 2012 to 2014. To be precise, 4.91 lakh people died in 2014 compared to 4.78 people killed by cancer in 2013. The reported cases of cancer in 2013 was 29.34 lakh compared to 28.20 lakh in 2014.

"Large number of ageing population, unhealthy lifestyles, use of tobacco and tobacco products, unhealthy diets, lack of diagnostic facilities are some of the factors that can be attributed to the increase in the number of cancer deaths," said one ministry official.

Datar has been offering India’s most comprehensive screenings for cancer; from cervical to prostate to renal to BRCA1, BRCA2, melanoma, retinoblastoma, thyroid, endometrial, ovarian, breast cancer etc;

Dr D Akolkar, director, Research and Innovation at Datar Genetics outlines the reason behind this study. “Too many people are being faced with the devastating diagnosis each year - brain tumours kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer and five-year survival remains low at just 19.8 per cent,” he said.
 
Brain tumours account for 85 per cent to 90 per cent of all primary central nervous system (CNS) tumours. The world wide incidence is close to 300, 000 cases, out of which 10 per cent are from India.
 
Dr Akolkar added, “Only 15 per cent of the existing incidences are diagnosed correctly at present. Management of GBMs remain challenging as there are no current curative treatments and therefore, mortality rates continue to stagnate at high levels. This research is critical, from the point of view of effective treatment as well as pharmacogenetics.”
 
Datar Genetics having a state of art facility at Nashik and a specialized team of scientists has hence undertaken the challenge to translate this liquid biopsy technology into a clinically applicable diagnostic platform which will immensely help the neuro oncologists to stratify tumor patients in real time for disease progression and therapy response.

AHERF will provide Datar Genetics the necessary technical and clinical support for co-validation of the assay. For the same, AHERF has assembled a consortium of Apollo Hospital’s neuro-oncologists to conduct collaborative research to understand brain tumours.

The project is the first of its kind in India. This clinical collaboration will pave the way towards development and deployment of Exosome based diagnostics by providing clinicians a non-invasive tool for prognosis, diagnosis, cancer recurrence and therapy monitoring.