Envisioned to drive a new standard of cancer care, Triesta Sciences, a Unit of HealthCare Global Enterprises Limited (HCG Cancer Hospital) Bengaluru on the occasion of completion of comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) of 1000+ cancer patients hosted a symposium on the therapeutic and prognostics utility of genome profiling of various cancers in association with Illumina-Premas.

Speaking at the event, Dr. B.S. Ajaikumar – Executive Chairman – Healthcare Global Enterprises Ltd. said, “Cancer cases in India are on the rise and the goal is to offer affordable as well as right cancer care to all. We have seen many instances where patients do not respond to certain drugs due to their heterogeneous genetic makeup. However, with CGP-based tumor profiling, we have consolidated cancer-relevant biomarker detection to understand all the genetic alterations upfront. This innovative approach has helped us to prevent or manage the disease and design the course of treatment with the best outcomes. With the completion of CGP for 1000 cases, HCG aims to implement an individualized predictive treatment model that will revolutionize cancer treatment, making it accessible for all patients, offer substantial saving to the health care system, focus on improved outcomes, and ultimately follow the HCG way of treating cancer: the right way, the first time. This has a huge impact on the healthcare cost in emerging economic country like India where availability and access to cancer drugs, rational combination therapies, and enriched clinical trials have been the additional challenges in adopting genomic medicine. This I believe will lead to more personalized cancer care and research in India.”

Also present at the conference, Dr. Mithua Ghosh, Director and Head – Clinical Diagnostics said, “Understanding the genetic signature or profile of the cancer helps oncologists penetrate the root level cause of the disease at the molecular and genetic level. CGP enables simultaneous detection of multiple oncology biomarkers associated with approved and developing therapies across multiple cancer types along with genetic signatures such as tumor mutational burden (TMB) and microsatellite instability (MSI), that are potential key biomarkers for emerging immunotherapies. In a series of studies done in our laboratory, it was observed that- up to 70-80% of patients had actionable genetic alterations enabling the oncologists to use more targeted and immunotherapy for their patients that led to more clinical trial enrollment. The outcomes of the current study have not only reinforced the utility of CGP in clinic but also helped to add more data of clinical relevance in Indian cohort. The current study has also enabled the researchers and laboratory to adopt a collaborative approach with the clinicians to initiate prospective studies and design randomized, genome specific clinical trials with a deliverable milestone to develop a large-scale Indian population-specific cancer database to achieve better therapeutic and clinical outcome.

“Comprehensive genomic profiling has overcome the challenge of iterative testing with limited biopsy samples and enabled us to consolidate the detection of biomarkers into a single assay, thus saving precious biopsy samples, reducing the need of re-biopsy and providing faster and comprehensive results” says Dr Sheela ML, Associate Director- Clinical Diagnostics.