Nanostics Inc. is a medical device and biotechnology company based in Alberta, Canada. They are focused on developing a highly accurate test to predict clinically significant prostate cancer. Their core technology, ClarityDX, combines a sensitive extracellular vesicle detection platform with advanced machine learning to diagnose a disease from a simple blood test. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer affecting men. According to recent statistics, nearly 1 in 7 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year. Many men have to undergo invasive, and potentially harmful, prostate biopsies to test for prostate cancer. The Clarity DX Prostate test detects prostate…
Author: Brett Johnson
September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, highlighting a disease that kills nearly 15,000 women annually out of the 21,000 diagnosed. Relatively uncommon as cancers go, ovarian cancer nevertheless causes the most deaths from all gynecological cancers. Known as the “silent killer”, Ovarian Cancer presents no symptoms at all, or symptoms that are so general — abdominal enlargement or swelling, abdominal fullness and pain, pain in lower abdomen — they cause no immediate alarm and are mistaken for another, and more likely, ailment. When the cancer finally is diagnosed, it is often at an advanced stage. This has led to a sobering statistic:…
Genomics, the branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of an individual’s genes, is already revolutionizing the way medicine treats cancer. Like many sciences, genomics has “niches;” single-cell genomics is a rapidly developing field, and current technologies can assay a single cell’s gene expression, DNA variation, epigenetic state, and nuclear structure within its environment. Cellular identity is critical by itself; the human body is composed of trillions of cells that belong to approximately 200 different cell types and even those types are, from cell to cell, filled with unique expression profiles. When cancer is involved, a disease…
Minomic, a Sydney-based diagnostic company, has developed an in vitro diagnostic test for the early detection of prostate cancer. Their product, MiCheck®, is a blood test that uses their patented monoclonal antibody together with other biomarkers to estimate the risk of a patient having aggressive prostate cancer. MiCheck® fills a major unmet market in prostate cancer diagnostics to counter reported high PSA levels and better assess patients by differentiating aggressive cancer from non-aggressive or no cancer before potentially invasive, expensive and patient deterring biopsies. MiCheck®, as a simple blood test, is far less invasive than a prostate biopsy, usually providing…
A new combination of two standing drugs and radiation therapy has the potential to revolutionize the treatment and care of pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal diagnoses an oncologist can face with patients. Using data from studies by NFCR fellow Dr. Rakesh Jain, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital used the popular hypertension drug losartan to augment the efficacy of the chemotherapy drug FOLFIRANOX (FFX). Currently in Phase II clinical trial (of three), the treatment is already generating enthusiasm in the oncological community as an effective tool against a cancer that has become synonymous with a death sentence. “Around 40 percent…
Cancer is an inherently confusing disease. Such a diagnosis can overwhelm an individual with a myriad of questions. Sometimes these questions pour out, one after another. Other times, the stream of questions is too overwhelming to articulate the hundreds of questions clouding the mind. Approximately 3500 women diagnosed with cancer this year will have just one question: ‘How will cancer affect my pregnancy?’ Though a relatively small number of women battle cancer while pregnant, there does not appear to be a key risk factor or any specific preventative measures aside from basic healthy habits. This means that any woman who is pregnant or…
Approved by the FDA in 1993, the drug cladribine offered hope for the then-fatal blood cancer called hairy cell leukemia, or HCL, and was soon expanded as a therapy for multiple sclerosis. Developed by NFCR scientist Dr. Dennis Carson at the University of California, San Diego, cladribine acts like a purine nucleoside agent, which prevents cells from making DNA and RNA, and can selectively kill hairy cell leukemia cells. Heralded as a breakthrough cure, cladribine remains the first-line treatment for HCL and is also tapped as a treatment for B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Now researchers have expanded its use to another deadly form of…
Prostate cancer is, after skin cancer, the most common cancer among men and the second biggest cancer killer for men in the United States. It’s typically an older man’s cancer with approximately 60 percent diagnoses in men over 65, with the average age being 66. As cancers go, prostate cancer has one of the better prognosis: the five-year survival rate for most men with local or regional prostate cancer is nearly 100 percent. However, for men diagnosed with prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, that number falls to 30 percent. An estimated 174,650 men in the United…