Data on Nanosphere Verisens PSA assay to be presented at AUA annual meeting

At the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA), data using the Nanosphere Verisens™ ultra-sensitive PSA assay (research use only) will be highlighted as one of less than 40 abstracts that were singled out by the Association for a special session for journalists.

William Catalona, MD, Northwestern University, will present data from more than 400 patients demonstrating this assay may be valuable in stratifying recurrence risk and monitoring male response to adjuvant therapy following radical prostatectomy.

The abstract will be shared during the special session on Wednesday, June 2 at 9:30 a.m. PDT. The 105th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association is being held in San Francisco, CA from May 29 to June 3, 2010.

The Verisens™ PSA assay tests for a single, well-known biomarker in blood. Nanosphere says the test has a number of advantages over other methods. A small amount of blood is used, rather than biopsied tissue. Using a single biomarker does not require complex algorithms in contrast to some multi-marker approaches. Moreover, testing using Nanosphere's ultra-sensitive PSA assay will be more cost effective.

For this research-use-only (RUO) Verisens™ PSA assay, Nanosphere provides testing as a service and has tested thousands of RUO patient samples for universities, commercial partners and for its internal research program for cancer biomarkers.

In addition to providing this PSA assay as a service, Nanosphere also provides a research-use-only cardiotoxicity assay for assessment of cancer therapeutics. The assay is based on an extremely sensitive human troponin assay. There is also a similar assay for rat troponin useful during pre-clinical studies.

Nanosphere is engaged in other cancer research and validation for protein biomarkers, independently and with commercial collaborations.