Apollo Hospitals, Strand Life partner for genomic tests

Apollo Hospitals today announced a partnership with Strand Life Sciences to launch the latter’s genomic tests across its hospitals.

The partnership in gene-based diagnostics with the Bangalore-based healthcare research company will help doctors at Apollo to develop personalised medicine for targeted treatments and better patient outcomes.

The tests would be offered in cardiology, oncology, rare genetic disorders and heritable eye diseases for Apollo patients.

The cost of these tests would range from Rs 15,000 to Rs 40,000.

Sapien Biosciences, a subsidiary of Apollo, would however facilitate the process of integrating genomics into the clinical practices at Apollo Hospitals.

Sangitha Reddy, joint managing director of Apollo, said right therapy to a disease becomes easy when you recognise which gene went wrong.

Strand Life chairman and CEO Vijay Chandru said the cost engineering and scale-up in operations would help them bring down the cost of tests in the long-term.

Chandru said Strand was currently doing gene-based diagnostics across 50 hospitals in the country.