“Atturos is building a pipeline of advanced proteomics-based tests to support personalised medicine and enable physicians and their patients to make better decisions. These advanced diagnostic tests provide much deeper insights into a patient’s protein status and thus add critical, actionable information to a patient’s diagnosis. The first test we are developing is a simple blood test to determine whether or not diagnosed prostate cancer is confined to the prostate. With this information, patients can have an informed role in their choice of treatment, including the opportunity of patient monitoring via active surveillance. This aims to prevent unnecessary over treatment of a disease that most patients will not die from. The test will be provided as a service to clinical centres and physicians.
The UCD spin-out, with the expertise of CEO David Corr, along with founder and CSO Steve Pennington have completed vigorous market research to identify the gap and validate their technology.
Over 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lifetime. Despite this, only 1 in 15 of these men will die from prostate cancer, and 98.9% of patients will survive over 5 years. Most men with prostate cancer die with rather than of the disease. The graphic on the left shows the impact that prostate cancer screening has on diagnosis.
Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) screening has caused an increase in prostate cancer diagnosis, due to the low specificity of PSA as a prostate cancer marker. This has led to many men being over diagnosed and overtreated. Being able to distinguish indolent prostate cancer from aggressive more serious disease is the key issue facing clinicians today.
Active surveillance has shown to be an effective management technique for low-risk prostate cancer, with up to 100% cancer-free survival after 10 years. Earlier diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer will also help patients receive the most appropriate course of treatment for them”.