LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - January 30, 2017) - ITUS Corporation ("ITUS") (ITUS), a company that is using the power of the immune system to diagnose cancer, today announced that it has successfully utilized its proprietary Cchek™ early cancer detection platform to identify the presence of Prostate Cancer. Prostate Cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men in the United States and is the fourth most common cancer worldwide. Each year, approximately 1.1 million people worldwide are diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.
The most common method currently used to screen for Prostate Cancer is a blood test known as the PSA which measures prostate specific antigen. While tens of millions of PSA tests are run annually, the PSA test is notorious for exceedingly large numbers of false positives and uncertain results. As a result of the deficiencies of the PSA test, a biopsy of the prostate gland is often performed which is invasive, painful, and expensive. While early in its development, Cchek™ has enormous potential as both a more effective prostate cancer screening test, as well as a confirmatory diagnostic for existing PSA testing.
Cchek™ is ITUS's early cancer detection technology for identifying the existence of solid tumors. The technology measures a patient's immune response to a malignancy by detecting the presence, absence, and quantity of certain unique cells that exist in and around a tumor and that enter the blood stream. These types of cells have been the focus of recent ground breaking research in immuno-oncology, enabling the development of revolutionary immunotherapies used for treating certain cancer types. Instead of seeking to alter or boost the body's immune system and its ability to destroy cancer cells, as is the case with immunotherapy drugs, ITUS has developed proprietary techniques and protocols for measuring the subtle immunological changes that occur in the blood stream during tumor development. ITUS has had early success and has demonstrated a high degree of accuracy and reliability with its approach to distinguish healthy patients from biopsy verified cancer patients. The goal is to establish Cchek™ as a non-invasive, inexpensive, cancer diagnostic blood test that can reduce or eliminate the need for traditionally expensive, invasive, painful, and often inaccurate cancer diagnostic procedures.
Prostate Cancer is the 15th type of cancer for which the company has demonstrated the efficacy of its Cchek™ cancer detection technology. The company previously announced success with 14 different cancer types, including Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, and Colon Cancer, which together with Prostate Cancer, account for the four (4) largest categories of cancer worldwide. In December 2016, ITUS announced preliminary results from its ongoing patient study, in which the company achieved sensitivity of 92% and specificity of 92% in biopsy verified cancer patients and healthy patients using its newest protocols.