Reliance’s Strand Life Sciences Secures Patent for Blood-based Early Cancer Detection Technology

BENGALURU:
Strand Life Sciences, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, today announced the grant of an Indian patent covering its integrated platform for early cancer detection using cell-free DNA (cfDNA) analysis. The patented platform brings together high-quality sequencing, rigorous quality control, biologically informed methylation and fragmentomic feature extraction, and machine learning to enable cancer detection and tissue-of-origin prediction from just a blood sample.

Widespread methylation pattern changes across the genome are a hallmark of cancer. A key innovation in the patent, among others, is obtaining these methylation patterns using genome sequencing with minimal loss or failure, thus enabling sensitive early cancer detection.

More than 1.5 million new cancer cases are estimated to occur annually, and unfortunately a large number of patients are still diagnosed at advanced stages, when treatment options are limited and outcomes are significantly poorer. Early detection has the potential to shift diagnoses to earlier stages. Current guideline-recommended screening covers only a small fraction of cancers and is not easy to scale. With decreasing costs of sequencing, the patented platform can potentially enable early detection at scale without expanding local infrastructure.

“Early detection is an increasingly relevant topic as cancer is becoming one of India’s greatest public health challenges. This patent reflects our commitment to developing scientifically rigorous, AI-enabled liquid biopsy technologies that can help detect cancer earlier from a simple blood sample. We believe this innovation represents an important step towards making precision cancer screening more accurate, scalable, and accessible,” said Ramesh Hariharan, CEO, Strand Life Sciences.

The granted patent further strengthens the company’s intellectual property portfolio in liquid biopsy and reinforces its strategy of developing integrated, AI-enabled molecular approaches for early cancer detection and precision oncology.