Eone Diagnomics Genome Center's (EDGC) advanced cancer detecting technology using liquid biopsy has been approved by the government for good manufacturing practice (GMP) for clinical trials ― a giant step forward for the Incheon-based genetic sequencing and medical service company.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety's approval on March 22, according to EDGC, has resolved a prerequisite condition for commercialization of "Onco-Catch," an in-vitro cancer-diagnosing service based on the technology which the company aims to introduce in the second half of 2022. "Onco" derives from oncology.

"Clinical trials are essential to commercialization of Onco-Catch, and getting the government's approval of GMP for clinical trials was a crucial step," an EDGC official told The Korea Times. He said the company will perform clinical trials on samples from cancer patients and non-patients who were authorized by medical facilities' institutional review boards.

With the liquid biopsy technology, the company has been working on completing the predictive diagnosis of cancer by detecting signs of a circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) ― a precursor to developing cancer. If there is any ctDNA, it exists in an extremely small amount amongst circulating free DNA (cfDNA) in blood.

EDGC says its super-precision medical technology, once commercialized, can benefit people by enabling them to preemptively discover whether they will have cancer, find out if a cancer they had treated will relapse, and how effectively anti-cancerous treatments will progress in their bodies. 

EDGC says the precision medical industry is a "new paradigm" that will enable people to overcome diseases via prognosis, customized treatments and individualized health management instead of drugs and operations. The company, citing the Biotech Policy Research Center, said that the global precision medical industry is expected to expand its market to about 112 trillion won ($99 billion) by 2023.

"Once the industry gets mixed with the existing bio-health industries that involve medical, health and IT devices, the market pie will grow exponentially," the EDGC official said. In 2017, the global bio-health market was valued at about $1.73 trillion, according to the company.

Along with America's GRAIL, EDGC is one of the leading companies in liquid biopsy based on next-generation genome sequencing.