Imagine a scan that comes back clear. The treatment is done, the patient is home, and everyone breathes out. Yet somewhere in the bloodstream, a single cancer cell may still be travelling — too small for a scan to see, but enough, one day, to start the disease all over again. Finding that one cell, hiding among billions of healthy ones, is the problem a Pune company has spent thirteen years solving.
Actorius Innovations and Research, founded in 2013 by Dr Jayant Khandare and Aravindan Vasudevan, built its work around circulating tumor cells — the cells that break away from a tumour and travel through the blood. Its flagship test, OncoDiscover, is a blood-based liquid biopsy that detects and counts those cells. The company says it is India’s first DCG(I)-approved test of its kind, and it is used across more than fifteen solid tumour types, from breast and lung to colorectal, prostate and pancreatic cancers.
The test works by capturing the rare tumour cells from a blood sample using proprietary immunomagnetic enrichment, then identifying them with fluorescence microscopy. Because it needs only a blood draw, the company says it can be repeated over time — before surgery, after surgery, during treatment and through follow-up — giving oncologists a running picture of whether cancer activity is rising, falling or holding steady, long before a scan shows a change.
Behind the test sits a triple layer of credentials the company points to with pride. OncoDiscover holds a CDSCO manufacturing and marketing licence under India’s Medical Devices Rules, its laboratory is NABL-accredited, and its quality system is certified to ISO 13485:2016. The company says more than 15,000 patients have been served and more than 500 doctors use the test, with the underlying research presented in over 100 scientific publications at forums including ASCO, AACR, ESMO and ISLB.
On 27 October 2026, at the CAMO 2026 symposium hosted with ACTREC at Tata Memorial Centre in Navi Mumbai, Actorius added a second dimension to the picture. It launched next-generation sequencing genomic tests that analyse circulating tumour DNA, genomic DNA and RNA from blood, designed to guide treatment decisions and to track minimal residual disease over time. Combined with OncoDiscover, the company says clinicians now get a dual view — the cells themselves and the molecular signals they carry — from simple blood draws. Two of the scientists who coined the term liquid biopsy, Prof Klaus Pantel and Prof Catherine Alix-Panabières, praised the integrated approach at the symposium.
“Even when imaging appears clear, circulating tumor cells and residual genomic signals can persist and drive future metastasis,” Dr Khandare said at the launch. The combination, he explained, gives clinicians quantitative cellular and molecular information to track disease, guide targeted treatment and make advanced monitoring more widely available in India, reducing dependence on imported tests.
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Actorius runs laboratories in Pune and Pasadena in the United States, and its work looks beyond detection as well. Its investigational OncoMetastat platform aims to go a step further — capturing and removing circulating tumour cells from the bloodstream before they can seed new tumours, turning monitoring into intervention.
Actorius’s own motto is that early detection is half the battle won. With a regulated cell test, a new genomic layer and a pipeline aimed at the cells themselves, the Pune company is building the tools to win that half of the battle earlier, from a single blood sample.
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