Up close with cancer: Why Mitra Biotech is looking to Nasdaq

In 10 years and with just $36 million, Mitra has built what could transform cancer care. It’s looking to Nasdaq to unlock its value, and to India to pressure-test its technology

Cancer treatment today wades through diagnostics, each with high claims. But they often provide little value in most cancers and to a vast majority of patients. Mitra Biotech is out to break the mould

Providing a definitive choice to the doctor, it claims to cut not just pharmaco-toxicity but also economic toxicity rampant in this disease

It may have flipped its corporate structure for a possible Nasdaq listing, its challenges seem unenviable, at least to its competitors

By early next year, it plans to show the world why payers should pay attention. Better, fully reimburse its tests

Sometime in mid-2015, a young cancer patient in New York City was driven to desperation. The family had built a treatment war chest of a few million dollars but the drugs weren’t working. None at all. Not even Keytruda, the expensive breakthrough drug from Merck & Co. which was approved around that time. Through academic connections, the family learnt about Mitra Biotech’s cancer diagnostics technology which the company offered on a compassionate ground. The diagnostic test threw up, to everyone’s surprise, a drug option which was low on everyone’s priority, and also, price.

The $20 chemotherapy drug Topotecan did wonders; the 6 cm tumour vanished.

AUTHOR

Seema Singh

Seema has over two decades of experience in journalism. Before starting The Ken, Seema wrote “Myth Breaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech”, published by HarperCollins in May 2016. Prior to that, she was a senior editor and bureau chief for Bangalore with Forbes India, and before that she wrote for Mint. Seema has written for numerous international publications like IEEE-Spectrum, New Scientist, Cell and Newsweek. Seema is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MacArthur Foundation Research Grantee.

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