The receipt of a reimbursement code for the Episwitch Prostate Screening (PSE) test developed by Oxford Biodynamics plc, following its recent launch, is good news for men frustrated with the inaccuracies in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests and the lack of alternatives, Jon Burrows, CEO of Oxford Biodynamics told BioWorld.
Questions regarding rates of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) cropped up during Poseida Therapeutics Inc.’s conference call on preliminary data from nine patients in the company’s phase I trial of P-PSMA-101, an autologous CAR T product candidate to treat patients with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).
Prostate cancer affects roughly 1 in 9 American men in their lifetime, with 174,650 new cases reported each year. However, current prostate specific antigen (PSA) tests lack specificity, leading to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of inconsequential cancers. Cleveland Diagnostics Inc. is looking to change that with its IsoPSA assay, which just received a breakthrough device designation from the U.S. FDA. In clinical studies, the noninvasive, blood-based test has been shown to have higher accuracy than standard PSA tests.