Nanostics, a private Canadian company developing diagnostic tests with its ClarityDX® platform technology, has expanded access to its ClarityDX Prostate test to men in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec. Nanostics is collaborating with Life Labs and CDL Laboratories to ensure men across the country have access to better prostate cancer screening tools.
Prostate cancer is the most diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men. In 2022, the Canadian Cancer Society reported almost 25,000 newly diagnosed cases and almost 5000 deaths. When caught early, the 5-year survival rate is close to 100%, but the survival rate decreases to about 30% if prostate cancer is diagnosed at a later stage when it has spread to surrounding tissues or throughout the body. The use of ClarityDX Prostate will lead to significantly improved patient outcomes by identifying men with aggressive prostate cancer earlier.
The Canadian Urological Association’s 2022 guidelines advocate for annual prostate cancer screening by age 50 for most men, and age 45 for those with a family history of prostate cancer via the PSA blood test which measures levels of prostate specific antigen in the blood. For men with a PSA levels over 3ng/ml, their recommendation is to utilize adjunctive testing strategies, such as ClarityDX Prostate to determine who needs a biopsy. The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care does not plan to update their 2014 guidelines for several more years. However, it is likely that the new guidelines will resemble the US Task Force’s updated recommendations from 2018 which recommends primary care providers discuss pros and cons of screening with their patients to potentially take advantage of the net benefit of screening methodologies including the use of PSA and other adjunctive tests.
ClarityDX Prostate is an adjunctive test for men with elevated levels of PSA that combines two biomarkers found in blood with a patient’s clinical information and uses a machine learning algorithm to determine a man’s risk of having aggressive prostate cancer. ClarityDX Prostate is designed to reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies by reducing the number of false positives associated with PSA testing. ClarityDX Prostate improves patient care while also reducing healthcare system costs by limiting the number of unnecessary biopsies and the associated risks and expenses that accompany this procedure.
Nanostics is a Member of Research Canada: An Alliance for Health Discovery. Visit rc-rc.ca to learn more.