NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Norwegian diagnostics developer DiaGenic said today that it has signed up SRL Ranbaxy to market its genomic breast cancer test in India.
SRL Ranbaxy is a clinical reference pathology lab network with 40 labs and around 750 collection centers in India.
DiaGenic said it conducted a study of its blood-based gene expression test in India that showed it was not affected by variations in ethnicity or by the menopausal state of the patient.
The gene set DiaGenic uses for the test was identified in Scandinavian and US cohorts, and the results of the Indian clinical study support “widespread use” of the test to diagnose breast cancer at an early stage, the company said.
DiaGenic added that the gene set showed the same predictive and diagnostic potential in the Indian population as it did in the Scandinavian and US populations.
All of the laboratory services under the agreement will be undertaken in India and will be provided by LabIndia Instruments, and they will be accessible at SRL Ranbaxy’s labs and collection centers.
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death for Indian women, and resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths in India last year, DiaGenic said, adding that the central cause of the high mortality rate is that only around 10 percent of breast cancer casess in India are discovered in the early stage when it is easier to treat.