A late-morning session of Wednesday’s opening day of the Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC 2024) (Jan 24-26) in Silicon Valley featured a riveting presentation by Oxford BioDynamics on a liquid biopsy test [EpiSwitch® Prostate Screening Test (PSE)], which, when combined with the standard prostate specific antigen (PSA) screening test, can improve the accuracy of prostate cancer risk screening from 55% to 94% (seehttps://www.94percent.com/). Use of this new test, which analyzes circulating chromosome conformation signatures (CCSs) highly associated with prostate cancer, could greatly reduce the problems of high rates of false-positive results associated with use of the PSA test alone. This would give patients and their doctors greater confidence in deciding whether to move forward immediately with treatment or adopt a “monitor the situation” strategy. Those with a PSE result of low likelihood of cancer can be placed on active surveillance and retested later without being referred for an invasive and often destructive prostate biopsy. A high likelihood result would prompt a referral to a urologist for consultation. Prostate cancer is the second leading cancer among men, following skin cancer.
Oxford BioDynamics is a global biotechnology company, advancing personalized healthcare by commercializing precision medicine tests. The Company’s product portfolio is based on a proprietary 3D genomic biomarker platform, EpiSwitch®, built for the prediction of response to therapy, patient prognosis, and disease diagnosis.
The blood-based PSE test works by combining PSA score with five epigenetic biomarkers (DAPK1, HSD3B2, SRD5A3, MMP1, and miRNA98). The presence of CCSs in these loci was associated with high-risk prostate cancer in previous work by Oxford BioDynamics. In a recent study of the PSE test, the tool was shown to improve the predictive accuracy of a standard PSA test from 55% to 94%. The PSE test is accurate, rapid, minimally invasive, and inexpensive, suggesting significant screening diagnostic potential to minimize unnecessary referrals for expensive and invasive MRI and/or biopsy testing.
The PSE screening test is now available in the United States and the UK. The test has been validated across multiple studies, including a study comprised of asymptomatic men selected at random for cancer screening.
The presentation was delivered by Alexandre Akoulitchev, PhD, Co-Founder and CSO of Oxford BioDynamics. Dr. Akoulitchev is a designer of the company’s EpiSwitch biomarker platform.
This platform is crucially based on 3D Genomics (or chromosome conformation). Oxford BioDynamics focuses on 3D Genomics because the 3D configuration of the genome plays a crucial role in gene regulation. The company believes that the genome’s 3D shape is as important as the genetic code it contains.
3D Genomics is a fundamental upstream gatekeeper controlling how genes are turned on and off. This highly complex control offers a huge wealth of untapped health information.
Understanding the 3D genome is key to diagnosing disease, predicting drug response, and determining health outcomes.
Because 3D genomic markers provide insights into the regulatory controls of the genome, Oxford BioDynamics’ tests answer important clinical questions where other modalities fail.
The company’s proprietary EpiSwitch technology maps this 3D architecture at scale, identifying abnormal configurations, that can be used to diagnose patients or predict how someone may respond to a disease or treatment.
Oxford BioDynamics was spun out from Oxford University in 2007 with the aim of translating fundamental scientific advances in 3D Genomics into a new generation of commercialized blood tests for life-changing diseases.
The company has created a valuable technology portfolio, including biomarker arrays, molecular diagnostics, bioinformatic tools for 3D Genomics, and an expertly curated 3D genome knowledgebase comprising hundreds of millions of data points from 15,000+ samples in 30+ human diseases.
The EpiSwitch platform is uniquely capable of reproducibly translating 3D genome regulation for clinical application. This platform opens the doors to a portfolio of clinical smart tests based on EpiSwitch® technology aiming to help people face the most challenging health decisions with confidence and tackle the rising costs of healthcare.
by Michael D. O’Neill
Editor & Publisher, BioQuick News