Nagjie Alijaj

Currently, the standard screening procedure for patients at risk of prostate cancer is based on the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. Men with elevated PSA levels are eligible for prostate biopsy. Unfortunately, 50% of the PSA tests will turn out to be false positive. This leads to a high number of unnecessary prostate biopsies in healthy patient, causing unnecessary stress, pain, and potential side effects.

Nagjie Alijaj and her team are developing a urine assay (PROBAN) for the screening of prostate cancer. The novel assay has a high sensitivity and thereby the potential to reduce the number of men who unnecessarily undergo prostate biopsy. PROBAN is a multiplex immunoassay based on patented antibodies for new unique biomarkers and a proprietary algorithm for patients’ risk stratification. Combined with PSA testing, it can distinguish between men with no prostate tumors and men at high-risk for prostate cancer.

During the Fellowship, Nagjie Alijaj aims to finalize the first prototype development of PROBAN and validate the test on a cohort of 200 urine samples.

Affiliation: Prof. Daniel Eberli

Start date: 08/2020