SEATTLE -- Onconome, Inc., a privately held Seattle based biotechnology company, today announced the publication of a groundbreaking research study conducted at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The study relates to a newly discovered blood protein, ProstaMark(R) EPCA-2 (Early Prostate Cancer Antigen) that could change the way men are screened for prostate cancer, a disease which kills more than 25,000 men each year. The simple to use blood test detected an unprecedented 94 percent of men with prostate cancer and correctly identified 97 percent of men who don't have the disease, according to the Hopkins study. The study, conducted under the direction of Robert H. Getzenberg PhD, professor of urology and director of...

A detectable level of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the first indicator of recurrent prostate cancer after radical prostatectomy. In a new Mayo Clinic study, the concept of PSA doubling time (DT) is found to be a reliable tool to distinguish which patients have prolonged innocuous PSA levels after therapy from those who are at great risk for disease recurrence and death from prostate cancer. Doubling time is defined as the duration for PSA levels in the blood to increase by 100 percent. Mayo's study, published in the April issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, concludes that patients with a PSA doubling time of less than three months after therapy are at imminent risk of death from prostate cancer. Patients with a doubling time of three...

Title: New Blood Test for Prostate Cancer
Category: Health News
Created: 4/27/2007
Last Editorial Review: 4/27/2007

Title: Better Prostate Cancer Test May Be Near
Category: Health News
Created: 4/27/2007 2:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 4/27/2007

The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, used to screen for prostate cancer, is imperfect. It often flags conditions that turn out to be benign, resulting in unnecessary biopsies for more than a million men every year, and it misses other cases of cancer entirely. So the search is on for a better way to find the disease and avoid needless bother and pain for those who don't have it.