In a study published last week in the online edition of BJU International, Quanterix's AccuPSA assay for the detection of prostate-specific antigen was shown to predict five-year biochemical recurrence-free survival in prostate cancer patients after radical prostatectomy.
Researchers at New York University and Johns Hopkins University used the AccuPSA assay – based on Quanterix's Single Molecule Array technology – to measure PSA levels in samples from 31 prostate cancer patients. They found that PSA nadir values – the lowest level of PSA following RP – as measured by the assay, could predict five-year biochemical recurrence with 100 percent sensitivity and 75 percent specificity.
According to David Wilson, Quanterix's senior director of product development, the AccuPSA assay could prove useful in determining which patients should receive radiation therapy after RP.
"Prostate cancer relapse can occur in up to 40 percent of patients after radical prostatectomy, and a third of these patients develop metastatic disease with a 20 percent probability of dying in 10 years," he told ProteoMonitor via email. "Recent data indicate that early adjuvant radiation therapy following surgery can significantly improve patient outcome. A key issue is: Which patients are most likely to benefit, and for which patients would this represent over-treatment?"
The AccuPSA test, he said "could better inform this decision for more effective targeted therapy."
The SiMoA platform uses arrays of femtoliter-sized reaction chambers designed to isolate single molecules, allowing each well to serve effectively as an independent assay for a single molecule and enabling high-sensitivity protein detection. In June 2010, the company published a study in Nature Biotechnology demonstrating that the system could detect PSA in the blood of radical prostatectomy patients at concentrations as low as 0.4 fM – a sensitivity it said was 1,700 times greater than that offered by conventional ELISA-based tests (PM 6/11/2010).
Quanterix is currently developing a commercial version of the SiMoA system, which it hopes to bring to market in 2013 (PM 2/25/2011). Wilson said that the company is planning larger studies of the AccuPSA test, but "will wait until the [commercial] SiMoA instrument is available so that the pilot study findings can be validated on our automated instrument system."
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