South Korean genome research company Eone Diagnomics Genome Center (EDGC) said it will start providing early cancer detection services to Europe working with a Ukraine-based clinic that is participating in its research.

Working with PB MEDICOM-IN, based in Dnipro, the Ukraine, EDGC will for the first time in Europe provide two types of liquid biopsy services for cancer diagnosis, according to EDGC, Jan. 26. The two companies have conducted clinical trials for the services for about a year.

Under the services, EDGC will provide PB with blood sampling tubes specialized for liquid biopsies. Blood samples collected from European countries will be shipped to EDGC's headquarters in Songdo, Incheon, where the samples' bioinformatics will be analyzed and, within three weeks, the results will be shared online with local medical experts in the countries where the samples came from.

EDGC's healthcare business team leader Cho Sung-min said the company, with central support from the Ukraine, will target the ten Commonwealth of Independent States including Russia, where cancer rates are particularly high.

EDGC had already started providing the liquid biopsy-based service for cancer diagnosis to Asian countries via Union Medical Healthcare in Hong Kong in 2019. During that process, the Korean firm was able to confirm the service's high market value.

Its partnership with PB began at the Kyiv International Economic Forum 2019 in Kyiv, where EDGC's co-CEO, Lee Min-seob, was invited as a keynote speaker. There, he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky along with representatives from European investment banks and China's Alibaba Group.

PB is a prominent, "4P precision" (preventive, predictive, personalized, participatory) medical facility with the Ukraine's best medical personnel and the results of more than 40 research studies published in international medical journal portals, according to EDGC.

EDGC's liquid biopsy techniques were introduced in the international medical journal, Oral Diseases, in 2020. The techniques have proven effective for cancers of the lung, breast, large intestine, stomach and most recently, the head and neck.