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 cancer biomarkers in the patient’s blood sample using breakthrough nanotechnology and generates a disease-specific fingerprint score using machine learning analysis of the data.
Clinical data found that Nanostics’s platform test is able to correctly identify aggressive prostate cancer forty percent more accurately than the standard PSA test. Nanostics has estimated that the Clarity DX Prostate test could eventually eliminate up to 600,000 unnecessary biopsies, 24,000 hospitalisations and up to 50% of unnecessary treatment in North America alone. The technology also offers significant cost savings – the blood test is expected to cost a few hundred dollars in comparison to around $2,000 for a biopsy. This could lead to a huge improvement in men’s diagnostic experiences and quality of life.
The company announced the start of its key clinical validation study in June. The study will be carried out with blood that is to be sampled from 2,800 men with elevated PSA levels. Patient recruitment is to be managed by the Alberta Prostate Cancer Research Initiative (APCaRI) and will start in Alberta at Calgary’s Prostate Cancer Centre (PCC) and Edmonton’s Northern Alberta Urology Centre (NAUC). This new clinical validation study is part of the process towards meeting FDA and Health Canada requirements for an in vitro diagnostic test, which will allow their ClarityDX Prostate test to be provided to patients.
To learn more about Nanostics and their Clarity DX Prostate test, visit their website.
