Yihuo Bio, a U.S.-based biotechnology startup, has announced plans to build research-and-development centers and factories in China before June and produce a new device for the early detection of lung cancer, China Daily reported.
According to the report, the plan is now awaiting approval from Chinese health authorities.
The report said that the device would be produced on a massive scale, based on a new cancer-detection method developed by scientists from UCLA. The method utilizes a novel technology called electric field-induced release and measurement to test saliva for epidermal gene mutations, which is a sign of lung cancer.
"Prevention and early detection are critically important for reducing mortality caused by cancer, but a vast majority of patients do not realize they have developed cancer until it is too late," Liao Wei, founder and CEO of the startup, said.
"Our saliva-based detection device provides a simple, noninvasive, and promisingly reliable method to diagnose lung cancer in very early stage," Liao added.
The Yihuo CEO said that gene mutations are observed in lung-cancer patients of all stages, but in early stages, the changes are often too subtle to be detected using old detection methods, especially those associated with body-fluid testing.
In 2008, lung cancer has replaced liver cancer as the leading cause of deaths in China and accounted for about 25 percent of all new cancer cases in the country in 2011, the National Central Cancer Registry said.
A report by medicaldaily.com said that China had 2.8 million cancer deaths in 2015 and 4.3 million new cancer cases, with lung cancer the most common of all.
"Cancer incidence and mortality have been increasing in China, making cancer the leading cause of death since 2010 and a major public health problem in the country," wrote the researchers who based their data from population-based registries made available through the National Central Cancer Registry of China.
According to the article, a team of scientists from the American Cancer Society, University of Sydney, and National Cancer Center Beijing used mortality data compiled by 72 local cancer registries to estimate the numbers of cancer deaths in China in 2015. These various registries compiled the data on cancer deaths from local hospitals, community health centers, vital statistics, and the Civil Administration Bureau.
Dr. Wanqing Chen of the National Cancer Center in Beijing led the research team that analyzed data from the years 2009 through 2011, representing 6.5 percent of the population, to estimate the effect of cancer.