OncoStem Diagnostics Wins CII’s Startupreneur Award in Biotech and Pharma Category

OncoStem Diagnostics, an Oncology focused company that enables personalised cancer treatment has won the Startupreneur Award organized by CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) in the Biotech and Pharma Category, for its innovative prognostic test ‘CanAssist Breast’.

OncoStem Diagnostics Wins CIIs Startupreneur Award

CII’s Startupreneur awards was started with an aim to recognise startups for excellence in cutting-edge technology and innovation, wealth creation, and employment generation. In 2018, CII put into action its novel concept of providing the essential ‘Corporate Connect’ to start-ups. The concept is based on the premise that when a large corporate house adopts a start-up which is working in its own area or allied areas of business, then it results in a win-win for both. These awards provide the most prestigious recognition from the corporate world to the most promising start-ups in India in various sectors.

Every 4 Mins A Woman Is Diagnosed With Breast Cancer

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Speaking about the award, Dr. Manjiri Bakre, CEO and Founder, OncoStem Diagnostics said, “It’s a great honour to receive this award and to be recognised for our innovation. This award gives us a valuable opportunity to collaborate with established corporates in the field of our work and leverage their network to ensure that our test is accessible to a larger audience.”

OncoStem’s CanAssist Breast is a prognostic test for early-stage hormone receptor positive breast cancer patients. It makes customized treatment possible by analysing the patients tumor in depth and providing a patient specific report. CanAssist Breast categorizes patients based on the risk of cancer recurrence clearly as either ‘low or high’ with no grey area in between. This clear distinction of patients based on risk of cancer recurrence allows doctors to devise treatment plans that are in tune with the prognosis, maintaining a balance between the benefits and side effects. Patients who are at low risk of relapse can potentially avoid chemotherapy and its associated side-effects while patients who are at high risk of relapse would benefit from the addition of chemotherapy to their treatment regimen.

The award from CII is yet another feather in OncoStem’s cap. CanAssist Breast was also awarded the ‘Best Innovation – Cancer Risk Assessment’ by NASSCOM’s CoE’s (Centre of Excellence) Life Sciences and healthcare innovation forum (LHIF) last year.

About OncoStem Diagnostics

OncoStem Diagnostics (www.oncostem.com) develops innovative multi-marker prognostic tests to enable personalized treatment of cancer patients. OncoStem was founded by Dr. Manjiri Bakre in 2011. OncoStem’s ‘CanAssist Breast’ is an innovative, cost effective test that can help clinicians to plan tailor made treatment for each breast cancer patient based on tumor biology.

The risk of cancer recurrence is dependent on tumor type, stage and on the biology of each patient’s tumor. ‘CanAssist-Breast’ determines the proteomic fingerprint of the tumor. This information is then used by OncoStem’s proprietary machine learning-based algorithm that stratifies patients as ‘low or high’ risk for cancer recurrence. Patients classified as ‘high-risk’ would have a greater probability of the cancer recurring than those classified as low-risk. This will guide clinicians in planning treatment and help patients in understanding the prognosis of their disease.

OncoStem is currently working on similar tests for other subtypes of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. OncoStem has raised ~ US $9 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Artiman Ventures.