A new, minimally invasive prognostic test to improve treatment of prostate cancer, called Telo-PC, will be developed following the establishment of a collaborative agreement between 3D Signatures and Belgium-based MDxHealth.
Prostate cancer diagnosis traditionally requires repeated invasive tissue biopsies, which do not guarantee the successful detection of tumor cells and may misdiagnose benign conditions as potentially dangerous, resulting in unnecessary surgeries. New, reliable, and minimally invasive diagnostic tools could help improve treatment decisions for prostate cancer patients.
Telo-PC uses 3DS’ TeloView software platform, which enables a 3D analysis of the patients’ telomeres, the protective caps at the end of chromosomes. The technology analyzes the organization of the genome in circulating tumor cells to determine how the disease will progress and if a patient will respond to treatment, allowing doctors to establish an individualized treatment plan.
“This is an excellent opportunity, combining our expertise in urological diagnostics with the innovative 3DS software platform, to evaluate an exciting technology that may improve the clinical management of patients with prostate cancer,” Jan Groen, CEO at MDxHealth, said in a press release.
The two companies will share the costs of the study, while MDxHealth received an exclusive option from 3DS to negotiate a licensing agreement for the test.
The American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 165,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be reported in the U.S. in 2018. About one in nine men are expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetimes.
Prostate cancer patients currently must decide between living with the disease under active surveillance or pursuing treatment, which could have serious side effects including incontinence, erectile dysfunction, bowel complications, and infection. Telo-PC could eventually help patients choose their treatment based on prognosis, if successful.
“We look forward to expanding the evaluation of our TeloView platform in prostate cancer through a collaboration with MDxHealth, as they are recognized world leaders in molecular diagnostic testing for patients with prostate cancer,” Jason Flowerday, CEO at 3DS, said.
“We hope this study will continue to build on the evidence observed to date which indicates that our Telo-PC test is able to predict the stability and aggressiveness of prostate cancer through three-dimensional nuclear telomeric profile analysis,” he added.
3DS also recently reported the development of a scoring model to predict the risk of relapse with its Telo-HL test for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Telo-HL also showed the ability to spot multiple differences in the DNA of patients who respond to standard chemotherapy, compared with patients who relapse or are unresponsive to treatment within the first year.
According to 3DS, Telo-HL is a proof-of-principle for TeloView and may speed up development of tests for lung cancer and multiple myeloma in addition to prostate cancer.