STARTUP

Every year, hundreds of people fall prey to can ceras it's not detected timely but a cost-effective technology developed by a city-based start-up will reduce the time taken to detect secondary stage of cancer significantly.




The technology, developed by Actorius Innovations and Research Private Limited incubated at Pashan-based Venture Centre, will enable doctors monitor the efficacy of their treatments and make changes to the dose if necessary. Clinical trials with 250 patients from Aurangabad were completed a couple of months ago, while more than 500 patients will go through clinical trials across Pune and Mumbai shortly.

Jayant Khandare, chief scientific officer, Actorius Innovations, explained that 90 per cent of deaths related to cancer are due to metastasis (spread of cancer) and only 10 per cent due to the primary tumor. Cancer cells shed by the primary tumor into the blood stream are known as circulating tumor cells (CTC). These cells travel to other organs to form new tumors thus effectively spreading cancer in the body. An accurate determination of the number of CTCs is important as it can help doctors with a prediction of sur vival for cancer patients. However, CTCs are hard to detect in the blood as their presence is one in a billion cells.