The ASCO has recently recommended expanding germline testing for tumour variants that may have a hereditary component. Credit: Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock.

Cambridge, UK-based EDX Medical is launching a diagnostic tool in the UK to identify patients’ risk of developing hereditary cancer.

The as-yet-unnamed diagnostic tool performs germline testing. While rarer, mutations in tumours, especially in prostate, breast and colorectal cancer, can be inherited, which germline testing can help determine.

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According to EDX, the pan-cancer test, which will be made available through private healthcare providers and certain National Health Service (NHS) genetic testing centres later this summer, can achieve 99% sensitivity and identify mutations in 70 genes known to be associated with cancers with a strong hereditary component.  

“Testing family members of cancer patients must be a key part of a National Cancer Prevention and Management Strategy,” said EDX CEO Mike Hudson. “This test enables doctors to identify important genetic risks shared by patients and their families, to take preventative action before the onset of disease, or to make well-informed clinical decisions and ensure access to modern medicines with greater chances of long-term survival should cancer occur later.”

In May 2024, the ASCO issued new recommendations around germline testing. The society said that even patients who would not normally be offered germline genetic testing based on personal or family history criteria, but who have a pathogenic or likely pathogenic variant identified by tumour testing in a gene, should be offered germline testing.

Last year, EDX entered a partnership with Thermo Fisher for the joint development and potential commercialisation of several clinical grade assays including cancer diagnostic solutions.

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Elsewhere in genetic testing, Chinese biotech MGI Tech and France’s SeqOne Genomics recently paired up to work on advancing an end-to-end solution for genomic testing.