Soon, at-home urine tests for prostate cancer

Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have developed a method to identify biomarkers for prostate cancer in urine that could make early screening for the disease as easy for men as personal pregnancy testing is for women.
The technique by University of California, Irvine researchers to clearly identify clinically usable markers for prostate cancer in urine could facilitate commercially available, at-home urine tests.
The same technology could potentially be used for bladder and multiple myeloma cancers, which also shed identifiable markers in urine.
"Our goal is a device the size of a home pregnancy test priced around USD 10. You would buy it at the drugstore or the grocery store and test yourself," said the study's corresponding author, Reginald Penner, UC Irvine Chancellor's Professor of chemistry.

"We're on the verge of a very important breakthrough in a new era of personal health management," Penner said.
Current, widely utilised testing for prostate cancer does not always catch the disease in its early stages, often yielding false positives and leading to unnecessary, risky treatments.

A recent report concluded that the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, test can be more harmful than beneficial, although it remains important for detecting recurring prostate cancer.
The UC Irvine researchers used a different biomarker, PSMA, and plan to test others to pinpoint if a cancer is growing aggressively or not.
The researchers used a combination of readily available chemicals and unique electronic sensors to create the screening process.

Salt in urine helps conduct electricity but also makes it challenging for typical biosensors to differentiate the 'signals' of cancer molecules from 'noise' around them in the electrodes.
The UC Irvine team developed a new type of sensor: They added nanoscale protein receptors to tiny, pencil-like viruses called phages that live only within bacteria. Double wrapping the phages with additional receptors greatly increases the capture and transmission of cancer molecule signals.
"We add a high concentration of the viruses, and they get trapped directly in the electrode. We're jamming the signal with the cancer marker, and it stays on louder than all the other material," said lead author Kritika Mohan, a graduate student with co-author Gregory Weiss' lab.

"To our surprise, it works really well in the ingredients that make up urine," Mohan said.
The next step is human clinical trials, which the researchers hope can be conducted fairly quickly since the testing will be noninvasive. The method has been patented and licensed, and a commercial partner has been identified.