NEW YORK – Precision oncology firm Genetron Health said last week that it has formed a joint venture and created a new operating center with China's Wuxi municipal government to advance its liver cancer early detection assay, HCCscreen.
Wuxi — a city in the southern part of Jiangsu Province in eastern China with a population of over 6 million people — has committed to using HCCScreen for its residents and will provide Genetron Health with other supportive measures including subsidies and tax benefits. Both parties are contributing capital and Genetron Health will own 90 percent of the venture.
Alongside the joint venture agreement, Genetron said that HCCScreen has been selected by the Chinese National Cancer Center and the Wuxi municipal government for use in a public health initiative called the Liver Cancer Early Screening Comprehensive Prevention and Control Project, which is expected to generate real-world data that would further support the test's commercialization.
The two parties had previously entered into a small-scale collaboration agreement, and the new initiative represents an expansion of that partnership. According to Beijing-based Genetron, Wuxi is committed to administering 150,000 tests to residents over a period of three years.
Sizhen Wang, Genetron Health’s cofounder and CEO, said in a statement that the effort "represents a major milestone for HCCscreen as it will be broadly used in a real-world setting, reflecting its clinical value that both the NCC and Wuxi recognized.
"Wuxi’s investment and other supportive measures also highlight its commitment to advancing the liver cancer early screening in China … [and] overall, we expect this initiative to ultimately help drive faster adoption," he added.