PreMet commercialization project aims to revolutionize the rapid, accurate, and efficient detection and diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer metastasis using a clinically relevant diagnostic platform that is cost-effective, scalable, and readily adaptable in hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centers, and by pharmaceutical companies for biomarker-driven drug discovery.
Breast cancer is a formidable global public health challenge, with 2.3 million new cases and 700,000 deaths every year. The global economic burden of breast cancer is estimated to be $25 trillion between 2020-2050. Primary breast cancer is curable in ~70–80% of patients if an early-stage diagnosis and treatments are performed. However, a significant number of patients have metastasis (i.e., the cancer has spread from the breast to other organs or distant sites of the body) already at the time of their first diagnosis. Metastasis is incurable and responsible for more than 90% of cancer-associated deaths due to drug resistance and complex biology. It can remain dormant at primary and secondary sites for months to several years before it turns uncontrollable.
More than 50% of the patients diagnosed with early-stage primary breast cancer eventually develop metastasis. The wide window of relapse and the lack of preclinical models for biomarker-based predictive diagnosis of metastasis in patients with primary breast cancer is a major roadblock in the treatment and survival of patients. Predictive diagnosis of early-stage metastasis of patients with primary breast cancer will tremendously increase the patient survival rate and save medical costs. Hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic centers urgently need a cost-effective, accurate, and predictive model for the diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer metastasis.
