PSA tagged posts

A new study published in Nature Communications provides a framework for researching whether earlier, model-guided treatment intensification can meaningfully improve survival for patients with aggressive disease.

“Early decline in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) to very low levels is one of the strongest predictors of long-term survival in metastatic prostate cancer. However, clinicians currently have to wait up to six months after starting therapy to see whether a patient achieves this favorable response. For patients who do not respond well, this delay may allow the cancer to progress and become more resistant to treatment,” said Soumyajit Roy, MD, a radiation oncologist at UH Seidman Cancer Center and first author of the study.

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Men whose prostate cancer returns after surgery or radiation therapy may now benefit from a new drug combination shown in clinical trials to cut the risk of death by more than 40%.

The combination therapy, which adds a drug called enzalutamide to commonly prescribed hormone therapy, reduced deaths in patients with recurrent prostate cancer after surgery or radiation for whom other treatments are no longer an option.

The trial results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine with simultaneous presentation during the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress (ESMO) Oct. 19 in Berlin.

“After initial treatment, some patients see their prostate cancer come back in an aggressive way and are at risk for their disease to spread quic...

Researchers at the University of East Anglia have helped develop a new blood test to detect prostate cancer with greater accuracy than current methods.

New research shows that the Prostate Screening EpiSwitch (PSE) blood test is 94 per cent accurate — beating the currently used prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test.

The research team say that the new test shows significant potential as an accurate and rapid cancer screening diagnostic.

The test was developed by Oxford Biodynamics in collaboration with UEA, Imperial College London and Imperial College NHS Trust.

Prof Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and kills one man every 45 minutes in the UK.

“There is currently no single te...

A new type of test that uses complex sugars to detect prostate cancer earlier and with greater accuracy is being developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham. The test works by identifying sugars, known as glycans, in blood. These sugars are attached to protein molecules called PSA and are known to undergo distinct but subtle changes when cancer is present in the body.

Particular types of glycans are associated with different cancers – but until now, there has been no technology available to detect the glycans in an accurate, timely and sufficiently specific way.

Research led by a team in the University of Birmingham’s School of Chemical Engineering, has now developed a technique that can identify glycans associated with cancer with unprecedented accuracy...