New Blood Test Predicts Prognosis for Advanced Prostate Cancer Patients

A new study has revealed that a DNA sequencing test for advanced prostate cancer patients can differentiate between those with poor and favorable prognoses. The new blood-based test, known as AR-ctDETECT, is designed to detect and analyze small fragments of tumor-derived DNA in the blood of patients with advanced, metastatic prostate cancer.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School (Minneapolis, MN, USA) and Duke University (Durham, NC, USA), involved analyzing over 770 blood samples from a phase 3 clinical trial of advanced prostate cancer patients. The AR-ctDETECT test successfully identified circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in 59% of patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Those with detectable ctDNA exhibited significantly poorer overall survival compared to patients without detectable ctDNA. These findings highlight the potential of the AR-ctDETECT test to provide crucial genetic insights that can help tailor treatments based on the unique characteristics of individual patients.

Image: The AR-ctDETECT test detects and analyzes small fragments of tumor-derived DNA in the blood of patients with advanced, metastatic prostate cancer (Photo courtesy of 123RF)

The study, published in Nature Communications, concluded that detecting ctDNA using AR-ctDETECT offers valuable prognostic information for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Future research will focus on integrating the genetic data from the AR-ctDETECT test with clinical patient data to improve prognostication. The team also aims to explore whether the AR-ctDETECT test could be used to predict patient outcomes in relation to specific treatments, potentially guiding the selection of optimal therapy in the future.

“Our AR-ctDETECT test, designed for prostate cancer, shows how valuable these blood tests could be in helping doctors better understand a patient's cancer and predict how the disease will progress, leading to more personalized treatment plans,” said Scott Dehm, PhD, a professor at the U of M Medical School and member of the Masonic Cancer Center.

“Our team demonstrated the ability of AR-ctDETECT to effectively identify distinct groups of patients based on their genomic profiles,” said Susan Halabi, PhD, a James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics at Duke University School of Medicine. “Notably, our study is the first to demonstrate, within a phase 3 cohort, that metastatic prostate cancer patients with positive ctDNA treated with standard therapies had worse overall survival compared to ctDNA-negative patients.”