Oxford Cancer Biomarkers (OCB), a spinout from Oxford University that is developing diagnostic tests for personalized cancer medicines, has received regulatory approval for its flagship product ColoProg in China, CancerRop, a South Korean molecular diagnostics developer, announced on Monday. Kosdaq-listed CancerRop is the second largest shareholder of OCB with a 16.48 percent stake. CancerRop shares jumped 11.81 percent to close at 64,400 won.

With the marketing approval, OCB gets closer to the roll-out of the prognostic colorectal cancer test across China. The milestone performance was achieved just six months after OCB announced a joint biomedical lab built in Ningbo Meishan Free Trade Zone through a partnership with My-BioMed Biotechnology (MBM). ColoProg could be the first precision diagnostic test that aims at the Chinese population.

OCB was established in 2010 by David Kerr, a renowned oncologist in colorectal cancer, and his Oxford University colleagues. The company has a suite of precision oncology diagnostic tools: ColoPredict to identify a subpopulation of healthy individuals at increased risk of developing colorectal cancer, ColoProg to stratify a patient`s risk for relapse based on various genetic biomarkers and ColoTox to measure efficiency and toxicity of targeted colorectal cancer drugs. These tests have been verified and marketed in America and Europe.

ColoProg, a test carried out after colorectal cancer surgery to identify patients that are at low, standard, or high risk of relapse, helps clinicians better target adjuvant chemotherapy to patients at highest risk of relapse through a digital histopathologic approach.

By Shin Chan-ok and Minu Kim

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