OncoAssure today announced that results of its clinical study validating OncoAssure Prostate, a novel test for prostate cancer management, have been published in European Urology Focus, a peer-reviewed and open access journal. OncoAssure Prostate is a brand new test which provides an improved estimation of the danger of aggressive prostate cancer, allowing optimal treatment selection for patients.
The Irish medical diagnostics company also announced today that this novel cancer test, which addresses an unmet need in prostate cancer management, is now available for commercialization.
Prostate cancer is the second most typical cancer in men, after non-melanoma skin cancer, and the second leading explanation for cancer death in men after lung cancer. Roughly 70% of prostate cancer patients have slow growing cancer and may safely leave their disease untreated while undergoing lively surveillance; while 30% have an aggressive cancer with a high potential for reoccurrence, which require aggressive treatments which are sometimes life changing.
Current approaches don’t accurately discover whether a patient has aggressive or low-risk prostate cancer; thus over-treatment is a significant issue as many patients undergo unwarranted radical treatments resulting in severe complications including infection, incontinence, erectile dysfunction and depression.
OncoAssure Prostate measures a novel set of ‘master driver’ genes linked to the progression of Prostate Cancer. This molecular data is combined with existing clinical parameters to supply a comprehensive and accurate assessment of a patient’s risk for aggressive prostate cancer. Because the test uses a concise panel of genes (4 prognostic and two reference genes), it provides a cheaper solution, which will be run in-house in hospital pathology laboratories using standard RT-PCR equipment with faster turn-around time and avoids the necessity to send clinical samples to external testing laboratories.
OncoAssure was co-founded by Des O’Leary and Professor William Gallagher in 2021 and is headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin. The OncoAssure team previously developed the OncoMasTR breast cancer prognostic test at OncoMark, a UCD spin-out company which was acquired by Cepheid Inc. in March 2021.
We’re delighted that the outcomes of our clinical study on OncoAssure Prostate have been published in a widely read, peer reviewed journal which highlights the advantages of the Test to practicing Urologists worldwide. We see this publication of those results as a significant step forward on the trail to having the Test available on a routine basis and bringing significant advantages to patients and clinicians within the management of Prostate Cancer. Our next step is to start discussions with 3rd parties to commercialize and launch the Test.”
Des O’Leary, CEO and Co-Founder, OncoAssure
He added, “Moreover I’m delighted to announce that we’ve got commenced development of our next product, a test for Cutaneous Melanoma and we’ve got also identified significant opportunities where unmet needs exist for brand new biomarkers in Bladder, Oesophageal and Squamous Cell carcinoma.”
OncoAssure’s Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder Professor William Gallagher, said, “We’re more than happy to show that our novel discovery and development process has enabled us to create a best-in-class highly accurate Prostate Cancer test.
This may not have been possible without the collaboration and co-operation of plenty of parties throughout the clinical and pathology environment in Ireland and Sweden, including Professor William Watson (UCD and Lead of the Prostate Cancer Research Consortium) and Professor Anders Bjartell (a outstanding urologist at Lund University, Sweden). Thanks also to the background support of the Irish Cancer Society and Science Foundation Ireland within the biobanking and translational cancer space that underpinned this exciting work.”
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