YONKERS, N.Y., July 8, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aureon Laboratories, Inc., a specialized laboratory dedicated to advancing personalized cancer treatment through predictive pathology, today announced the peer-reviewed results from its prostate cancer study published in the July 2009 issue of the Journal of Urology. The study demonstrates that Aureon's patented approach of integrating morphometry and biomarker data with clinical information improves accuracy for identifying which patients are most likely to develop disease progression post-surgery.
"We are very excited about this article because it provides important peer-reviewed credibility for our biopsy-based test," said Vijay Aggarwal, CEO of Aureon Laboratories. "Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the limited utility of clinical information in the era of annual PSA screening. Prostate Px+ represents a new weapon in the fight against prostate cancer because it uses state-of-the-art image analysis, molecular analysis and advanced mathematics to give physicians and their patients unprecedented amounts of information."
Today, more than 85% of all newly diagnosed patients are considered low- or intermediate-risk by American Urological Association guidelines. Noteworthy is the fact that two patients in the same risk group, with similar clinical features, can have very different outcomes. For this reason, it is important for patients to understand as much about their disease as possible. Knowing their individual risk allows patients, with their physicians, to make more informed treatment decisions.
The study published in the Journal of Urology assessed the accuracy of applying a multivariate approach to determine patient risk. Five institutions from the U.S. and Europe collaborated to provide prostate needle biopsy samples from 1,027 patients who were treated with surgery and followed for a median of 8 years. The study, using morphometry and biology, identified a panel of biopsy and patient characteristics that more accurately stratifies risk with respect to clinical outcome. The system's method is twice as effective at identifying patients who are at high risk for disease progression, within 8 years, than other tools currently available. This is most evident for patients in the low- to intermediate-risk range where clinical variables alone are limited.
"The results from this study are very promising and demonstrate the value of applying the systems pathology approach to biopsy tissue for risk assessment," said Dr. Peter Albertsen, Professor of Surgery (Urology) at the University of Connecticut Health Center and a co-author of the study. "Integrating clinical information with multiplexed biomarker analysis, tissue morphometrics and mathematics is the next step in providing objective, personalized information that can assist physicians and their patients make more informed decisions."
For more information about the study "Personalized Prediction of Tumor Response and Cancer Progression on Prostate Needle Biopsy" please visit www.aureon.com or www.jurology.com.
About Aureon Laboratories
Aureon Laboratories' mission is to enable personalized patient care through predictive pathology. Aureon has developed a patented, high throughput systems pathology technology platform to predict individual clinical outcomes through the interrogation of tissue. The platform generates and analyzes an integrated, digital view of clinical findings, tissue micro-anatomy and tissue molecular pathology to determine which combination of features predicts specified individual clinical outcomes. Allied with major cancer centers, Aureon operates a CLIA-certified and CAP-accredited laboratory that provides predictive pathology services to the practicing physician. For more information about Aureon, please visit www.aureon.com or call 1-888-SYS-PATH.
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