DISQUS

VentureBeat: How not to write about cancer diagnostics

  • Terry Mahoney · 2 years ago
    EPCA-2 is a Lab Test! Not a new drug being hyped by some profit-oriented pharmaceutical marketing organization.

    The "gold standard" - a long-term, double-blind survey on a randomly selected population is of academic curiosity, and serves as a leash commercial marketing of new drugs. As such, it is useful to protect the public. But the EPCA-2 test need not be so restricted.

    If NASA had used the equivalent of the controlled double-blind study during the Apollo program, the U.S. would probably still be trying to get to the moon. Not to mention the trillions of dollars that would have been wasted.
  • David P. Hamilton · 2 years ago
    Terry, thanks for your comment. I did, however, want to point out that EPCA-2 is not only a lab test, but also a commercial product under development by Onconome, which has exclusive worldwide rights to the technology.

    I know the clinical-trial process can be slow and that it frustrates many patients and their loved ones. But if a test like EPCA-2 is going to drive clinical decisions -- and really, that's the only reason to care about it, because if it doesn't catch cancer earlier and improve patient survival, what good is it? -- it needs to be proven to work. And that means doing the prospective trials that will show that there's actually a benefit to screening for EPCA-2, since otherwise it's just one more unproven diagnostic that will suck up healthcare resources and quite possibly result in unnecessary surgeries and their attendant side effects. A test that doesn't actually show you what you think it does can do a lot more harm than good.

    I don't even know how you'd begin to design a double-blinded study for something as singular as a moon shot. Clinical trials are for studying population effects, not for solving engineering problems.
  • geodeco · 3 months ago
    Two years later... What is the status of the EPCA-2 trials?
  • Joe · 1 month ago
    The status is, Onconome is suing one of their chief collaborators for fraud: http://chronicle.com/article/Company-Says-Resea...
    And now the worldwide rights to the technology, regardless of its merit, will lie festering in a litigation trap for years. Good job fellas.