In their own words: Stephen Pennington of Atturos

Stephen Pennington of Atturos tells the story of his startup: 

“Our company name is loosely based on the ancient Greek, “to make a decision.” We aim to become a leading global company developing and delivering advanced diagnostics solutions to support better clinical decisions, leading to better patient outcomes. We are developing a multiplexed blood protein test called OCProDx which measures multiple proteins in blood (serum) to give a ‘confinement score’ which is the probability that prostate cancer remains within the prostate gland and has not spread beyond it. 

“Atturos was founded in 2014 and became a spin out company from University College Dublin in 2016. OCProDx provides information to help a man newly diagnosed with prostate cancer decide what to do following diagnosis. That choice is to either have invasive treatments with significant side effects or continue to have the disease monitored until it will need treatment, if it ever does. 

“Existing tests are either not very effective or dependent on taking biopsies which is invasive, painful and carries risks and negative consequences. Tests from biopsies also have errors associated with them. OCProDx is minimally invasive, can be repeated and gives information that assists directly in the decision of whether to treat the tumour or monitor its progression. For a large proportion of men with prostate cancer monitoring the disease is a good choice because recent evidence shows that treating them invasively does not prolong their lives, and makes the quality of life much poorer. 

“OCProDx is of benefit to men diagnosed with prostate cancer as it provides information to guide the significant, life changing decisions they will have to make about their treatment. We plan to launch the OCProDx test in early 2019.” 

For more see atturos.com/