The University of Michigan’s new prostate cancer risk clinic will use the SelectMDx test to diagnose the disease — a move it believes will reduce unnecessary biopsies.

SelectMDx is a urine-based molecular test capable of identifying patients at low risk of developing prostate cancer. Its results help patients avoid having to undergo invasive and painful biopsies.

MDxHealth developed SelectMDx to fill a diagnosis gap: Doctors perform more than two million prostate biopsies a year, and less than a third find cancer. This means that two-thirds of the patients who had biopsies could have avoided them.

SelectMDx measures the probability of a patient developing an aggressive form of the disease with 98 percent accuracy, MDxHealth reported.

The Michigan Medicine clinic was created to monitor men with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations, which are thought to increase a patient’s risk of developing aggressive prostate cancers.

The clinic will use the SelectMDx tests to give doctors a signal of whether a biopsy would detect an aggressive from of cancer.

“Now, more than ever, we have an understanding of which men have cancer that needs to be treated and which men have cancer that can be closely watched. These men who have inherited mutations are much more likely to have aggressive prostate cancer. We know that treatment of aggressive prostate cancer works — it prevents death and suffering, and that’s what this initiative is really about,” Todd Morgan, MD, the urological surgeon leading the clinic, said in a press release. He is also an assistant medical professor at the University of Michigan.

Concerns about the accuracy of the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test still generate debate about which men should undergo routine screening for prostate cancer. But recent studies suggest that men with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations are at higher risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer and would benefit from regular screening.

“The Michigan Medicine prostate cancer risk clinic is the first of its kind, and we hope to see a global expansion of such clinics for genetically high-risk men. Early diagnosis remains critical for men harboring aggressive disease, when there is an opportunity for curative treatment,” said Jan Groen, chief executive officer of MDxHealth. “Michigan Medicine’s choice of SelectMDx for its prostate cancer risk clinic speaks volumes about the clinical value our test brings to the diagnostic process.”