News and Research

March 29, 2025

Zachary Klaassen interviews Alessio Crippa about the prognostic value of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer from the ProBio trial. Dr. Crippa explains how this adaptive platform trial uses non-invasive liquid biopsies to characterize patients' tumor genetic profiles, guiding treatment randomization.

October 14, 2024

Bram De Laere discusses the ProBio trial, a platform study for metastatic prostate cancer. Dr. De Laere explains the trial's unique design, which uses circulating tumor DNA analysis to guide treatment decisions and evaluate multiple biomarker-therapy combinations simultaneously. The study demonstrates that AR pathway inhibitors generally outperform taxane-based chemotherapy in mCRPC patients, with genomic markers influencing treatment outcomes.

Date: 2024-10-07 - 2024-10-08
Place: Stockholm, Elite Hotel Marina Tower

Topics : Overview and update of the ProBio study, Scientific results from ProBio and presentations of experimental compounds, Result of the inclusion competition, PSMA-PET in metastatic prostate cancer, Clinical implementation of BRCA testing in Sweden and Future development of ProBio

September 06, 2024

European Society For Medical Oncology - First results of the Prostate Biomarkers (ProBio) platform study demonstrate that, on average, androgen receptor pathway inhibitors outperform taxanes in all circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA)-positive patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) who are androgen receptor pathway inhibitors-naive and with or without prior docetaxel exposure.

August 21, 2024

Men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer should be treated primarily with second-generation hormone drugs, which offer better treatment response and longer life expectancy than chemotherapy. However, the effect depends on which mutations the patient’s tumour carries. This is shown by results from the ProBio study, led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings are published in Nature Medicine.

August 20, 2024

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in Belgium. It often also involves metastases. The right treatment at the right time is vital, but it looks different for every patient. Thanks to the ProBio research of Dr. Bram De Laere (UGent, Karolinska Institute), Prof. Piet Ost (UGent, GZA Sint-Augustinus) and partners from the renowned Karolinska Institute (Sweden), a blood test can predict which therapy will benefit the patient most.

January 22, 2024

The right therapy at the right time. It sounds obvious, but every patient is different. In the ProBio research by Dr. Bram De Laere (UGent), men with metastatic prostate cancer are treated based on the tumor profile in their blood.

January 04, 2024

Zachary Klaassen interviews Henrik Grönberg about the ProBio trial, presented at ESMO 2023. The ProBio trial, designed in 2019, is a platform trial aimed at determining the optimal treatment sequence for metastatic prostate cancer and identifying predictive biomarkers for treatment efficacy.

December 05, 2023

Bram De Laere, PhD, Ghent University in Belgium, discusses the ongoing Phase III ProBio (NCT03903835) trial, a liquid biopsy biomarker-driven platform trial for men with metastatic prostate cancer. The trial uses liquid biopsy screening to profile cell-tumor DNA (ctDNA) and select men with detectable ctDNA for randomization to different treatment arms.

November 02, 2023

The uniquely designed Prostate Biomarker (ProBio) study (NCT03903835) used outcome-adaptive randomization to compare biomarker-driven treatment selection against physician’s choice, and to compare androgen receptor inhibitors (ARPIs) against standard-of-care (SOC) and taxanes in castrate-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC)

October 30, 2023

ESMO 2023 Insights: "Androgen Receptor Pathway Inhibitors or Taxanes for Patients With mCRPC - A Direct Comparison in ProBio, a Randomized, Outcome-Adaptive, Biomarker-Driven Platform Trial"

Clinical implementation of the ProBio Assay

August 01, 2023

The ProBio Prostate Cancer Assay has been implemented as a routine diagnostic test in collaboration with Clinical Pathology, Karolinska Hospital. A new treatment, Lynparza (olaparib), was recently approved for men with mutations in BRCA1/2. The ProBio Prostate Cancer Assay is optimised for identifying mutations in BRCA1/2, either through analysis of DNA extracted from plasma or tumor tissue.
For additional information, see press-releases at Karolinska Hospital (Swedish) or Karolinska Institutet (English).

Date: 2022-09-19 - 2022-09-20
Place: Stockholm, Grand Hotel Saltsjöbaden

Topics : Current status and future directions, trial design, liquid biopsies, investigational drugs, monitoring and safety, health economy, auxiliary research and lessons learnt so far.

September 30, 2019

ESMO 2019 Congress - ProBio An outcome adaptive multi arm open label multiple assignment randomised controlled biomarker driven trial in patients with metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer.

May 25, 2019

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified blood-based biomarkers that may determine which patients will benefit from continued hormonal therapy for advanced prostate cancer.

November 21, 2018

Comprehensive circulating tumor DNA profiling of metastatic prostate cancer enables non-invasive detection of tumor-associated genomic alterations.