In tandem with September’s Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, Cleveland Diagnostics is kicking off a campaign to boost awareness of and education around screening tests for the disease.
The flagship product of ClevelandDx, co-founded by the Cleveland Clinic, is its IsoPSA test. Like other prostate-specific antigen assays, it analyzes a blood sample to look for heightened levels of PSA, which may indicate the presence of prostate cancer; unlike many competing tests, however, ClevelandDx’s technology looks for certain biomarkers in the protein’s structure linking it specifically to cancer rather than other conditions that can also raise PSA levels.
The “A PSA on PSA” campaign, which will begin Sept. 1, is centered around a fact sheet providing information about PSA tests and the screening process. It also lists statistics and common symptoms of prostate cancer, offers tips for preventing cancer and suggests questions to help patients start a conversation with their doctors about prostate cancer risk factors and screening.
With each download of the sheet from the campaign’s website, ClevelandDx will make a donation of an undisclosed amount to ZERO Prostate Cancer, a nonprofit supporting testing, research and patient advocacy for the disease. Meanwhile, ZERO Prostate Cancer has pledged to match all donations sent to the organization throughout the month of September.
Current guidelines recommend that men with an average risk of developing prostate cancer begin talking to their doctors about screening options at age 50 and as early as 40 for those at a heightened risk. From there, if no cancer is detected, those with regular levels of PSA should continue screening every two years, while those with PSA levels over a certain threshold should be tested yearly.
This marks the second year for the “A PSA on PSA” campaign, which ClevelandDx started in 2023 to educate patients and their families and caregivers about the importance of screening for prostate cancer, currently the second most common form of cancer in American men and the second deadliest, responsible for around 35,000 deaths per year.
“The survival rates for prostate cancer are promising if caught early, which is why spreading the word on the importance of early detection is absolutely critical,” Arnon Chait, Ph.D., the company’s president and CEO, said in a launch announcement Tuesday. “We’re grateful to have the opportunity to lead such an important initiative in this fight against the disease.”
ClevelandDx earlier this year closed a $75 million funding round led by Novo Holdings that the company said would go toward increasing supply of the IsoPSA test and extending its diagnostic technology into other forms of cancer.