A/Prof Jyotsna Batra awarded REDI fellowship 

A/Prof Jyotsna Batra (pictured below right) from the QUT Centre for Genomics and Personalised Medicine will work with TissueGnostics on developing antibody technology for prostate cancer detection.

The Researcher Exchange and Development within Industry (REDI) Fellowship program provides up to $250,000 per Fellow, per annum, and supports them with entrepreneurism experiences and exposure to strengthen Australia’s successful translation and commercialisation of medical research.

A/Prof Batra is a geneticist who uses genetic and bioinformatics analysis to define disease risk.

She said the technology will be based on her research group’s discovery of DNA variations linked to prostate cancer, including a prostate specific antigen (PSA) gene variant that impacts current clinical testing accuracy, and the novel molecules that identify it.

“Small modifications to existing antibodies can enable better PSA detection in cancer tissue sections,” A/Prof Batra said.

“We can then use the novel antibodies to create better diagnostic tools to identify men whose cancer is likely to be aggressive and who would benefit most from intensive treatment.”

Prostate cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in Australian men with about 17,000 men newly diagnosed each year, and the second most common cause of cancer death.

TissueGnostics is a globally acting and innovative medtech company that develops solutions for automated analysis of tissue sections using state-of-the-art image analysis and machine learning technologies.

Professor Batra will develop a diagnostic kit and corresponding AI-based analysis software with TissueGnostics in Vienna, Austria, part-time over two years from mid-2022.

She will then use the antibody technology for her Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship to develop new diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers and progress clinical trials.

This article was republished from QUT. Read the original article.