Advanced diagnostics in oncology - a test bed for risk prediction in prostate cancer

Purpose and goal

Prostate cancer is a heterogeneous disease with vague symptoms. Consequently, it is a huge challenge to correctly diagnose prostate cancer and the routine of the investigating urologist plays a major role to decide if a biopsy is necessary or not. Today there is no blood-based test with high accuracy that can replaces biopsies. The aim of the project was to develop a test with performance and accuracy exceeding today´s diagnostic possibilities.

Expected results and effects

We have identified a specific biomarker signature that discriminates healthy donors from patients with metastatic disease. We have also found several significantly deregulated proteins not described before between the various disease groups. We have set up a prospective study at the Urological Clinic both in Malmö, Lund and Trelleborg and today about 120 patients are included. Those samples can be used for validation of our results. Furthermore, the first health economic study that analyzed the need for advanced diagnostics in prostate cancer has been performed within this project

Planned approach and implementation

The logistics and collaborations within the project have been excellent. All parties and coworkers in the project have been involved, informed and have had input and an overview of the entire project. Although the clinical diagnose groups and thus the clinical samples were more complex than previously known, the project reached an initial test result that was clearly comparable to the best published studies. We believe this being a success in itself, since we demonstrated that a simple blood sample contain enough information for advanced diagnostics of prostate cancer.