Strand Life Sciences, a Reliance Industries subsidiary, has been granted an Indian patent for a blood test that looks for cancer in cell-free DNA, the company said in a press release on Tuesday, July 7.
The patent covers a platform with several parts working together: genome sequencing, strict quality control, methylation and fragmentomic features pulled from the DNA, and machine learning. From a single blood sample it is meant to detect cancer and predict which tissue the cancer came from.
What the patent protects
According to the company, a key innovation is the way the platform records methylation changes across the genome with minimal loss or failure. Widespread methylation changes are a hallmark of cancer, and picking them up reliably is what makes early-stage detection sensitive.
Scale is the pitch. More than 1.5 million new cancer cases are estimated each year, the company said, and many patients are still diagnosed late, when treatment options are limited and outcomes are much worse. Screening recommended under current guidelines reaches only a small fraction of cancers and is hard to expand. With sequencing costs falling, Strand says the platform could allow early detection at scale without new local infrastructure.
“Early detection is an increasingly relevant topic as cancer is becoming one of India’s greatest public health challenges,” said Ramesh Hariharan, CEO of Strand Life Sciences. He called the patent a step toward making precision cancer screening “more accurate, scalable, and accessible.”
The company
The patent adds to Strand’s holdings in liquid biopsy. Strand is a spin-off from the Indian Institute of Science and works in genomics and diagnostics. It has a hospital partner network and works with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics companies. With this patent, it said, it aims to push research and eventual deployment of blood-based screening tools that can complement existing cancer screening programs.
Both government and private players in India are looking to invest in affordable, scalable diagnostics to address the growing cancer burden.
Sources
- Strand Life Sciences Secures Patent for AI-Enabled Blood Test to Detect Cancer Early I India CSR
- New cfDNA patent could scale early-stage cancer diagnosis in India
