Diagnostics
Testing for prostate cancer – MiCheck® Prostate: quick, non-invasive, highly specific
MiCheck® Prostate is a blood test that uses our patented algorithm together with other biomarkers to estimate the risk of a patient having aggressive prostate cancer.
MiCheck® Prostate is designed to assist urologists in making the decision to recommend a patient for a biopsy or to recommend some form of active surveillance monitoring.
The problem in prostate cancer diagnosis
The PSA test is commonly used to detect prostate cancer however elevated PSA levels can be caused by factors other than prostate cancer.
Six men in ten with elevated PSA are needlessly subjected to an unnecessary prostate biopsy.
Prostate biopsies are invasive, unpleasant and sometimes hazardous (in relation to infection). This can make a man with elevated PSA reluctant to undergo a potentially unnecessary procedure. Additionally, prostate biopsies are expensive.
The estimated over-diagnosis using PSA for population screening in the USA (US Cancer Screening 2018) is 23-29% for Caucasian men and 35-44% for African-American men.
The solution for prostate cancer diagnosis is MiCheck® Prostate
MiCheck® Prostate can assist urologists in making the decision to refer a patient to biopsy by estimating the risk of the patient having aggressive prostate cancer. MiCheck® Prostate is a simple blood test that provides an answer to the physician on the patient’s cancer risk within 48 hours. The test works by measuring several protein biomarkers including a proprietary marker owned by Minomic called Glypican -1.
Examples of patient reports
Why is MiCheck® Prostate the missing step in prostate cancer diagnosis?
- MiCheck® Prostate is more specific than a PSA test, and can help the urologist decide if a biopsy is really needed.
- Patients and their physicians will have confidence about what to do next. Patients with aggressive prostate cancer who should get treatment will get it sooner, and men whose MiCheck® Prostate results are negative can be monitored periodically instead of undergoing a prostate biopsy.
Comparison of PSMA and GPC-1 Technologies Useful in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Therapy
The success of an antibody therapeutic relies on its specific expression in tumor, with limited or no expression in normal tissue. In prostate cancer, Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA) has been targeted clinically for both imaging and therapy. Overexpressed in the prostate tumors of some individuals, it has allowed successful imaging using 68Ga-PSMA-PET and therapy using 177Lu-PSMA or 177Lu-J591. However, not all patients tumors express PSMA, leaving 10-30% of patients with late stage metastatic disease who do not respond to PSMA-directed therapy.
Moreover, PSMA is not only expressed in tumor tissue, but is also expressed in a variety of normal tissues. Immunohistochemistry studies have shown PSMA to be expressed in the kidney, testis, ovary, brain, salivary gland, small intestine, lacrimal glands, colon, liver, spleen, breast, skeletal muscle and benign fractures, as well as malignancies of these tissues (Farag et al, 2020), which means that targeting PSMA using radiation leads to exposure of normal tissue to radiation and subsequent tissue damage and associated side effects.
Glypican-1 is a new tumor targeting molecule that is expressed in a variety of deadly solid tumors of high unmet need (including prostate, brain, bladder, esophageal, pancreas, mesothelioma and cervical). What makes Glypican-1 such a promising therapeutic target is its lack of expression in normal tissue (confirmed by the FIH clinical trial completed with Miltuximab®). Moreover, targeting of Glypican-1 with antibody therapeutics has proven completely safe in numerous animal studies, as well as the human study of Miltuximab®.
Clinically, GPC-1 is a particularly exciting target, as expression of GPC-1 has been associated with poor clinical prognosis and aggressive tumors, in several solid tumors including pancreatic, esophageal and glioblastoma. Furthermore, we have evidence to suggest potential synergy between GPC-1 directed therapy and standard of care therapies such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.