Investigational Urine Test Better at Finding Prostate Cancer

MyProstateScore 2.0 (MPS2) proved more accurate at detecting prostate cancer than PSA and other biomarkers, researchers reported, sparing men more invasive testing, such as prostate biopsies and MRI (JAMA Oncol 2024 Apr 18). The test was designed to specifically identify higher-grade disease by measuring expression of 18 genes most often found in the presence of significant cancers. In 743 men with elevated PSA levels, using MPS2 would have avoided 35% to 42% of prostate biopsies without missing diagnoses of clinically significant disease, whereas existing biomarker testing could have avoided only 15% to 30% of biopsies. The improvement was more dramatic in men who previously had negative biopsies—the rate of unnecessary biopsies dropped to between 46% to 51% compared with 9% to 21% for existing tests. One limitation of the trial, however, was that only 13% of participants were African American, a population known to have a higher prevalence of prostate cancer.