Sayre Therapeutics, today announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Cancer Genetics Inc.(CGI), a leading organization for enabling precision medicine for oncology through molecular markers and diagnostics. This agreement is for the sales and marketing rights of the CGI’s Tissue of Origin (TOO) test in India and South Asia. The data that is generated by the use of the TOO test in India, would help in expanding CGI’s base and thus validate its clinical utility, globally.

According to Panna Sharma, CEO and president, Cancer Genetics, the partnership with Sayre Therapeutics, is an important milestone to make precision medicine available, in high-growth and high-demand markets such as India.

“We intend on continuing to widen the access to our exclusive branded selection of genomic and biomarker driven tests. Sayre has also established their spread and influence in the oncology sector throughout India,” he added.

The TOO test is a microarray-based gene expression test which can locate or identify metastatic, poorly differentiated and undifferentiated cancers, among other challenging tumours. It can even help in reporting the tissue of origin of more than 15 common tumour types including thyroid, breast, non-small cell lung, pancreatic, gastric, colorectal, liver, bladder, kidney, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, melanoma, ovarian, sarcoma, testicular germ cell and prostrate tumours.

From a medical perspective, Dr Palanki Satya Dattatreya, senior consultant and medical oncologist, Omega Hospital, Hyderabad, said that Cancer of Unknown Primary (CUP) is a common condition in India. It is an enigma to specialists and also, an aggressive disease with hostile diagnosis for patients. Mostly, patients with CUP are subjected to a number of tests and uncertainty about the disease and the condition. Using the TOO test can be extremely helpful, in such cases, as it is based on the concept of gene expression profiling. Its high specificity and sensitivity, can remove ambiguity and also help the patient in gaining a more precise guideline-based therapy, which can result in potentially better survival rates.

Ravindranath Kunjithai, head, Medical and Regulatory Affairs, Sayre Therapeutics, said, that it was optimistic to see that a large number of physicians have shown acceptance towards this test and agree that it can take things forward in the process of taking guided decisions or changes with regard to the treatment plan of patients with CUP.