Veracyte, Inc., a leading cancer diagnostics company, has officially presented new data at the 2025 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (ASCO GU), data which is related to its Decipher Prostate and Decipher Bladder tests.
Talk about these tests on a slightly deeper level, we begin from the company’s Decipher Prostate Genomic Classifier, a 22-gene test developed using RNA whole-transcriptome analysis and machine learning. Informing treatment decisions for patients with prostate cancer, the stated test is performed on biopsy or surgically resected samples so to provide an accurate risk of metastasis with standard treatment.
Such a mechanism not only helps physicians in personalizing patients’ care, but it also treads up a long distance to recommend less-intensive options for those at lower risk, as well as more-intensive treatment for those at higher risk of metastasis. So far, the Decipher Prostate test has been validated in dozens of published studies that collectively involved more than 100,000 patients.
In fact, it is the only gene expression test to achieve “Level IB” evidence status and inclusion in the risk-stratification table across most recent NCCN® Guidelines* for prostate cancer.
Turning our attention towards Veracyte’s Decipher Bladder Genomic Subtyping Classifier, it happens to be a 219-gene test developed using RNA whole-transcriptome analysis and machine learning. Meant to serve patients who have been diagnosed with bladder cancer but have questions regarding treatment intensity, the tool classifies bladder tumors into five molecular subtypes, each having distinct tumor biology and potential clinical implications.
The purpose of it all is to help physicians and their patients better understand the degree of benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy and/or the likelihood of harboring non-organ-confined disease at time of surgery, respectively.
“The breadth and depth of Decipher-focused data presented at the ASCO GU Symposium reinforce the widespread impact our Decipher tests are having on clinical care, as well as on research into the molecular underpinnings of prostate and bladder cancers,” said Elai Davicioni, Ph.D., Veracyte’s medical director for Urology. “They also demonstrate Veracyte’s commitment to clinical rigor and evidence development. We are grateful for our ongoing collaborations with leading clinician-researchers, which are enabling us to continue driving innovation that can further help patients.”
Anyway, talk about the newly-published results on a slightly deeper level; they reveal that the Decipher Prostate Genomic Classifier may inform treatment-intensification strategies for patients undergoing salvage radiotherapy. This it does by identifying those who will benefit from pelvic nodal radiation.
More on that would reveal how the whole exercise took into account responses from more than 709 patients who experienced biochemical recurrence following prostatectomy. These patients were allocated to three treatment study arms i.e. prostate bed radiation therapy alone (PBRT); PBRT and short-term androgen deprivation therapy (STADT); along with PBRT, STADT and pelvic lymph node radiation therapy (PLNRT).
Upon doing so, it was adjudged that patients with high Decipher Prostate scores received greater benefit from the introduction of PLNRT and STADT to PBRT, as compared to those with low genomic test scores.
As for the Decipher Bladder Genomic Subtyping Classifier, it was found to successfully identify patients whose bladder cancer was less aggressive, based on their cancer’s molecular subtype. This particular study documented responses from 226 patients with high-grade, clinically organ-confined bladder cancer who subsequently underwent radical cystectomy without any neoadjuvant therapy.
The researchers further got to know that patients with the luminal favorable bladder cancer subtype, compared to those without it, had significantly lower likelihood of being upstaged to T3+ disease. On top of that, the study even saw luminal favorable subtype being significantly associated with better overall survival.
“Physicians are currently limited in their tools for determining which patients with prostate cancer will benefit from dose-escalated radiation therapy. Our findings, derived from two Phase 3, randomized trials, suggest that the research-based PORTOS signature has potential to be a useful clinical tool to help inform important radiation treatment decisions for patients following a prostate cancer diagnosis or who are experiencing biochemical recurrence,” said Dr. Zhao, who developed the PORTOS (Post-Operative Radiation Therapy Outcomes Score), a genomic signature designed using Veracyte’s Decipher GRID research tool.