MDxHealth Methylation Test Detects Prostate Cancer

MDxHealth has reported results from a study demonstrating that changes in DNA methylation patterns in benign tissue could predict an adjacent prostate cancer.

The test delivers a ‘field cancerisation effect’, which provides an index of higher grade malignancy in the adjacent tissues that are missed due to biopsy sampling errors.

The methylation test uses three DNA molecular markers of prostate cancer — GST-P1, APC and RAR-beta.

The results of a study showed that field effects were detected at a distance of a centimetre or more from the edge of the histological focus of cancer, and that such marker-positive zones form an indication of presence of prostate cancer.

MdxHealth CEO Dr Jan Gaston said by providing information about the cancer status of tissue adjacent to the biopsy as well as the core sample itself, field effect assays using such molecular markers could prove to be an important addition to standard histopathology.