Unmet Need
According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers and is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. However, most patients with prostate cancer have the low-risk, nonaggressive form that does not require invasive intervention or treatment. The gold standard of diagnosing men with prostate cancer is the serum biomarker prostate-specific antigen test. While urinary biomarkers have demonstrated promise, there are no FDA-approved biomarkers that can non-invasively differentiate between aggressive and non-aggressive prostate cancer, with currently available biomarkers having poor discrimination power towards aggressive prostate cancer. As a result, patients with non-aggressive prostate cancer are subjected to unnecessary biopsies. There is therefore an unmet clinical need to discover novel biomarkers that can be used to differentiate between nonaggressive and aggressive prostate cancer.
Technology Overview
Researchers at Johns Hopkins, using high-throughput automated urine sample preparation and data independent acquisition mass spectrometry, have identified novel panels of urinary glycoproteins that are capable of differentiating between non-aggressive and aggressive prostate cancer. These noninvasive tests are reliable, of good predictive capability, and could reduce unnecessary biopsies.
Stage of Development
The inventors have discovered novel panels of urinary glycoproteins that can reliably detect early aggressive prostate cancer in both discovery and validation patient cohort samples. Further validation is ongoing.
Publications:
