Page 44 - 03-May-2024

Desmond Pink is Nanostics' chief scientific officer
cancer, one that might spare patients the hazards associated with other screening processes.
“Almost everyone with prostate cancer exhibits a high PSA level in their blood, but not everyone with elevated PSA levels has prostate cancer,” says Colin Coros, the chief commercialization officer at Nanostics. “The current test often has a lot of false positives, which sometimes results in a biopsy, which is not a nice test.”
“Not a nice test” undersells it. A prostate biopsy involves inserting around 12 to 13 needles into the prostate through the rectum to obtain samples for cancer detection. It’s a painful procedure carrying
a small-but-not-insignificant risk of infection, which has resulted in fatalities among patients in the past.
Nanostics’ test — dubbed ClarityDX Prostate — utilizes a combination of machine learning artificial intelligence, blood biomarkers and clinical data from a patient’s Alberta Health history to create a more accurate test capable of predicting aggressive cancer.
“Our test isn’t designed to replace the PSA test, but
if you have an elevated level then you would get our test,” says Coros. “We’re three times more accurate than PSA testing, so it’s a step before undergoing more invasive procedures like a biopsy.”
ClarityDX Prostate is already in use by health-care practitioners in Alberta, with plans to expand into other parts of Canada, the United States and Latin America. However, it was Alberta’s wealth of available data sets that enabled the technology’s development.
“With machine learning it’s about the quantity and quality of data,” Coros says. “Being in Alberta, with centralized health data, we had access to all of men’s health information. It’s the data and the quality of that data that made this happen.”
Recognizing the importance of that access to data, Nanostics is collaborating with Alberta Health Services to expand its access to, and use of, medical data, aiming to extend ClarityDX Prostate technology to other illnesses.
“We’re developing tests in bladder cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease,” Coros says. “It really opens up a lot of other avenues.” ED.
44 EDify. MAY.24
Nanostics is collab- orating with Alberta Health Services to expand its access to, and use of, medical data, aiming to extend ClarityDX Prostate technology to other illnesses.