Apollo, Datar launch product for early detection of breast cancer

The EasyCheck would be available across the country at all Apollo Cancer Centres.Apollo Hospitals founder-chairman Dr Prathap Reddy said In line with our mission to spread awareness about early detection of cancers and offer world-class cancer treatment, the launch of EasyCheck - Breast marks an important success towards quality technological advancements ensuring timely diagnosis and treatment to lower the mortality rate. This association with Datar Cancer Genetics has made a path-breaking achievement and at Apollo Cancer Centres, we are well-equipped to diagnose breast cancers with the best-in-class advancements and treatments, he said.

Apollo Cancer Centres, in association with Datar Cancer Genetics, on Wednesday announced the launching of ''EasyCheck - Breast'', a blood test that can detect breast cancers at early stages in asymptomatic individuals with “high accuracy”.

With an easy draw of a small quantity of blood, now ''EasyCheck - Breast'' can help in the detection of breast cancer even before the first stage. The EasyCheck would be available across the country at all Apollo Cancer Centres.

Apollo Hospitals' founder-chairman Dr Prathap Reddy said: “In line with our mission to spread awareness about early detection of cancers and offer world-class cancer treatment, the launch of EasyCheck - Breast marks an important success towards quality technological advancements ensuring timely diagnosis and treatment to lower the mortality rate.” “This association with Datar Cancer Genetics has made a path-breaking achievement and at Apollo Cancer Centres, we are well-equipped to diagnose breast cancers with the best-in-class advancements and treatments,” he said. Speaking about the product, Rajan Datar founder-chairman, Datar Cancer Genetics, said ''EasyCheck- Breast'' is the culmination of years of collaborative international research and innovation and has been developed, tested, and validated on population-sized cohorts. A simple blood draw holds the promise of early cancer detection in asymptomatic individuals and opens the possibilities of successful treatments and improved survival, he said. Currently, mammography is used as a standard of care for detection of breast cancer. In India, it is used as a recommendation but not yet widely adopted. This has led to a situation where most women are detected with breast cancer at stage 3 or 4, where the treatment is expensive, it is usually toxic, and outcomes are not encouraging, he said.

The ''EasyCheck Breast'' test has been validated in 40,000 individuals, as part of a large clinical trial and the accuracy has been an outstanding at about 99 per cent with virtually no false positives, Rajan Datar said. “This blood test virtually eliminated any false positives with very high sensitivity. The test works on detection of circulating tumor cells which are released by tumors. We have developed this test in India with the help of Indian scientists and it’s the world’s best test available today. It is available across 20 countries and now in India through Apollo Hospitals at an affordable cost,” he added. PTI VVK NVG NVG