(Press-News.org) DENVER — A new test could reliably detect early increases in prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels — a biomarker commonly used to measure the recurrence of prostate cancer — in men who have undergone prostate cancer-treating surgery. Earlier detection of these rising levels would allow men with cancer recurrence to undergo earlier, more effective treatment for potentially better outcomes.
Data measuring the efficacy of this new test were presented at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development.
"AccuPSA is a simple blood test that can tell a physician important information about prostate specific antigen levels after radical prostatectomy," said David Wilson, Ph.D., senior director of product development at Quanterix Corporation, the manufacturer of the test. "AccuPSA has the potential to eliminate unnecessary treatments and enable earlier detection of recurrence, which may lead to earlier treatment, better outcomes and have a positive impact on health care costs."
After undergoing radical prostatectomy, many men remain at a significant risk for cancer recurrence. Because of this, patients are monitored very closely for rapid increases in PSA, which may signal cancer recurrence.
Standard PSA tests are primarily used to screen asymptomatic men for prostate cancer. However, once the prostate is surgically removed, PSA levels are usually undetectable using standard tests, according to Wilson. AccuPSA, which uses Quanterix's proprietary Single Molecule Array (SiMoA™) technology, is able to detect PSA with unprecedented sensitivity, and at much lower levels than standard PSA tests because it can selectively capture and measure individual PSA molecules.
To determine the accuracy of the novel blood test, PSA levels were measured in blood taken from 60 men who had undergone radical prostatectomy. These specimens had all been categorized as being below the detection limit of standard PSA tests. However, using AccuPSA, researchers were able to measure PSA in all of the samples.
"After radical prostatectomy, many important questions remain for the physician and the patient," Wilson said. "AccuPSA is designed to help the physician and patients to become better informed by measuring PSA after radical prostatectomy and establishing if the cancer is gone or has metastasized or recurred."
The next step in this research is to conduct a large retrospective clinical study to formally establish the utility of this test.
"We hope to be able to establish with our clinical study that nadir values — the lowest value of PSA that occurs post-surgery — are predictive of prostate cancer recurrence," he said. "What this might mean for a post-radical prostatectomy patient is that a nadir PSA level below an established threshold could indicate if the patient is effectively considered 'cured.'"
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The mission of the American Association for Cancer Research is to prevent and cure cancer. Founded in 1907, the AACR is the world's oldest and largest professional organization dedicated to advancing cancer research. The membership includes 32,000 basic, translational and clinical researchers; health care professionals; and cancer survivors and advocates in the United States and more than 90 other countries. The AACR marshals the full spectrum of expertise from the cancer community to accelerate progress in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer through high-quality scientific and educational programs. It funds innovative, meritorious research grants, research fellowships and career development awards. The AACR Annual Meeting attracts more than 18,000 participants who share the latest discoveries and developments in the field. Special Conferences throughout the year present novel data across a wide variety of topics in cancer research, treatment and patient care. The AACR publishes six major peer-reviewed journals: Cancer Research; Clinical Cancer Research; Molecular Cancer Therapeutics; Molecular Cancer Research; Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention; and Cancer Prevention Research. The AACR also publishes CR, a magazine for cancer survivors and their families, patient advocates, physicians and scientists, providing a forum for sharing essential, evidence-based information and perspectives on progress in cancer research, survivorship and advocacy.
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DENVER — A test based on a panel of microRNAs under development by Rosetta Genomics, Ltd., in Rehovot, Israel, may allow for more precise diagnosis and better targeted therapy for patients with lung cancer.
Tina B. Edmonston, M.D., director of the clinical laboratory at Rosetta Genomics, Inc., presented data on the assay at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development, held here.
Lung cancers are traditionally divided into two main groups, either neuroendocrine or non-small cell lung cancer. In 20 to 30 percent ...
DENVER — A new microRNA (miRNA) screening assay detected the majority of early-stage colorectal cancers with good specificity and sensitivity.
"Our test has the potential to be safe, cheap, robust, accurate and of little or no inconvenience to the individual, and could, therefore, easily be integrated into national screening programs as part of an annual checkup," said Søren Jensby Nielsen, Ph.D., scientific manager, Diagnostic Product Development, Exiqon A/S.
Nielsen presented the results at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer ...
DENVER — Researchers have identified a novel, dual-platform technology, the On-Q-ity Circulating Cancer Capture and Characterization Chip (C5), which they believe is more efficient than the commonly used single-platform device in identifying circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in breast cancer.
Analyzing CTCs in blood can identify cancer cells and cancer cell mutations to provide physicians with methods for improved cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.
In order to efficiently capture CTCs, two capture mechanisms were used to trap CTCs by antibody affinity and size. ...
ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research shows that an intravenous (IV) treatment may cut a person's risk of dying from bacterial meningitis. The research is published in the September 29, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The treatment is called dexamethasone.
"Using this treatment in people infected with meningitis has been under debate because in a few large studies it was shown to be ineffective," said study author Diederik van de Beek, MD, PhD, with the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands ...
In two landmark studies published today in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis (DTA), UK and Swiss research teams reveal two techniques proven to identify dissolved cocaine in bottles of wine or rum. These tools will allow customs officials to quickly identify bottles being used to smuggle cocaine, without the need to open or disturb the container.
Cocaine is among the most common drugs of abuse and a large number of imaginative techniques of smuggling cocaine through border controls have been reported in recent years. One of the latest techniques involves smuggling ...
Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- The story of the double helix's discovery has a few new twists. A new primary source -- a never-before-read stack of letters to and from Francis Crick, and other historical materials dating from the years 1950-76 -- has been uncovered by two professors at the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
The letters both confirm and extend current knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the epoch-making discovery of DNA's elegant double-helical structure, for which Crick, James D. Watson (now CSHL's chancellor ...
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Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration supported the immunotherapy study. Grants from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, supported the study of intermediate-risk neuroblastoma. Both studies were conducted through the Children’s Oncology Group.
“Anti-GD2 Antibody with GM-CSF, Interleukin-2 and Isotretinoin for Neuroblastoma,” and “Outcome after Reduced Chemotherapy for Intermediate Risk Neuroblastoma,” New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 30, 2010.
About The Children’s Hospital ...
EDITOR'S NOTE: Images to accompany this story are available at http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/river-crisis.html END ...
Multiple environmental stressors, such as agricultural runoff, pollution and invasive species, threaten rivers that serve 80 percent of the world's population, around 5 billion people, according to researchers from The City College (CCNY) of The City University of New York (CUNY), University of Wisconsin and seven other institutions. These same stressors endanger the biodiversity of 65 percent of the world's river habitats and put thousands of aquatic wildlife species at risk.
The findings, reported in the September 30 issue of Nature, come from the first global-scale ...
HOUSTON -- (Sept. 29, 2010) -- A Rice University-led team of physicists is reporting the first success in a three-year effort to build a precision simulator for superconductors using a grid of intersecting laser beams and ultracold atomic gas.
The research appears this week in the journal Nature. Using lithium atoms cooled to within a few billionths of a degree of absolute zero and loaded into optical tubes, the researchers created a precise analog of a one-dimensional superconducting wire.
Because the atoms in the experiment are so cold, they behave according to the ...
