For the many patients and families navigating prostate cancer, Prostate Cancer Awareness Month is a time to focus on the people behind every diagnosis and the questions, decisions, and care teams that shape each patient’s path forward. It is also an opportunity to look at how tools such as prostate cancer genomic testing are helping inform more personalized conversations about care.
A diagnosis can bring many questions, and one of those is often: what treatment approach is right for me? For some patients, the answer may involve close monitoring. For others, it may involve surgery, radiation, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, or a combination of treatments. These choices can be deeply personal and complex, especially when patients and their doctors are weighing not only how to treat the cancer, but how that treatment may affect the person’s daily life, long-term health, and hopes for the future.
As we honor Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, it is worth taking a closer look at what comes after diagnosis: the clinical considerations that help patients and clinicians determine the right path forward together.
Finding the Right Path Forward
Prostate cancer can behave very differently from patient to patient, which means the path forward is not always obvious. Some patients may be managed with careful monitoring, while others may need more intensive treatment to reduce the risk of disease progression. For patients and their doctors, the challenge is determining which approach is right for that individual person and balancing the potential benefit of treatment with side effects, quality of life, and what matters most to the person receiving care.
Traditional clinical factors that help inform care, such as PSA level, tumor grade, stage, and imaging results, remain important, but they may not always tell the full story of how the cancer may behave.
That is where evidence-based genomic tools can help complete the picture. They do more than provide another data point; they help clinicians understand how tumor biology may relate to real treatment decisions. In a disease that can behave so differently from person to person, that level of evidence can help bring greater confidence to the path forward.
Guiding Prostate Cancer Care With Genomic Testing: The Role of Decipher Prostate
The Decipher Prostate Genomic Classifier is a tissue-based molecular test that measures the expression of 22 genes in a patient’s prostate tumor. It is used to assess the risk of metastasis or metastatic progression in localized or advanced prostate cancer and is included in the NCCN Guidelines® for prostate cancer.1
Its role in care decision-making is supported by more than 125 peer-reviewed publications2 demonstrating its clinical validity and utility, more than 300,000 patients tested to date,3 and more than 25 ongoing prospective randomized clinical trials that include Decipher Prostate.
By looking at the expression of certain genes within a patient’s tumor, Decipher Prostate can help clinicians better understand how that cancer may behave beyond what traditional clinical factors alone can show. Across the prostate cancer continuum, from localized disease to advanced or metastatic disease, the goal is consistent: provide clinicians and patients with genomic insights to help enable more personalized treatment planning.
For some patients, that information may help clinicians determine when more intensive treatment should be considered. For others, it may help inform when added treatment may not be needed. In both cases, Decipher Prostate is designed to support treatment decisions that are more closely informed by the biology of each patient’s cancer.
Building the Research Foundation for More Personalized Care
As prostate cancer care becomes more personalized, the quality of data behind each test matters. At Veracyte, evidence generation is central to how we advance care. Genomic information should not only describe a tumor. It should help clinicians understand how that information applies to real treatment decisions.
For Veracyte, that commitment is reflected in years of collaboration with clinicians and scientists around the world. Research leveraging Decipher Prostate results has been published in medical journals and includes evidence from clinical studies, long-term patient follow-up, and randomized trial analyses evaluating treatment outcomes. Together, this body of work helps show how the Decipher Prostate test can provide additional insight into tumor biology and support treatment planning across different points in prostate cancer care.
Veracyte continues to build on that foundation. Ongoing studies using Decipher Prostate are evaluating how genomic information can support care across more patient groups, more treatment settings, and more moments in the prostate cancer journey. This work takes time, investment, and follow-through, and reflects Veracyte’s broader commitment to helping advance more personalized prostate cancer care.
For patients, that can mean greater confidence that their care is being guided by more than a broad diagnosis, and that their treatment plan reflects the specific biology of their cancer.
Rick’s Story: One Patient’s Path and Purpose
That patient perspective is at the center of a recent episode of Medical Stories, a docuseries published by PBS that follows people navigating life-altering illnesses. The episode features Rick, a prostate cancer patient of Dr. Kosj Yamoah, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center, and follows his journey from diagnosis and treatment to finding purpose through giving back to his community. In the episode, Dr. Yamoah discusses how modern medicine is beginning to integrate genomic testing to help personalize care, including the use of the Decipher Prostate test results to better understand the likelihood that a patient’s cancer may become more aggressive. Rick’s story is a reminder that treatment planning is not only a clinical process; it is a deeply human one, shaped by each patient’s goals, values, and hopes for the future.
Following the Evidence Across the Prostate Cancer Journey
Recent studies continue to build clinical confidence in the Decipher Prostate test, showing how genomic information can help inform very different treatment questions across the prostate cancer continuum.
In metastatic prostate cancer, the ENZAMET trial analysis presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting addressed a high-stakes question: who may benefit from adding chemotherapy to a treatment plan that already includes androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) plus enzalutamide? Together, these three treatments are commonly referred to as triplet therapy.
Using the Decipher Prostate test, researchers found that the test may help identify patients more likely to benefit from adding chemotherapy, as well as patients with lower Decipher Prostate scores who showed no benefit from the added treatment. Veracyte announced that this analysis provided some of the strongest clinical evidence to date, Level 1B evidence,4 for a genomic test guiding this triplet therapy decision in advanced disease.
At another point in the prostate cancer journey, a recent study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), looked at men on active surveillance, a standard approach for many patients with lower-risk prostate cancer that involves closely monitoring the disease instead of starting treatment right away.
The UCSF study evaluated patients on active surveillance who had at least two biopsies and a Decipher Prostate test. Researchers found that patients with high Decipher scores were more likely to have signs that their cancer had progressed on later biopsies, including a higher tumor grade or more concerning tumor features. The authors concluded that the Decipher Prostate test may help identify which patients on active surveillance are at higher risk of their cancer progressing, and which patients may need closer monitoring.
Together, these studies show the breadth of questions the Decipher Prostate test helps address. In advanced disease, the question is whether more intensive treatment is likely to help. In active surveillance, it is how closely a cancer should be monitored. These are very different moments in care, but they reflect the same broader purpose: helping clinicians and patients use genomic information to make treatment decisions that better reflect the biology of the cancer.
Looking Ahead to ASTRO 2026
Veracyte’s broader evidence-building efforts using the Decipher Prostate test will be further showcased later this month at the 2026 ASTRO Annual Meeting. At the meeting, the company expects to share additional research using the test, including six oral presentations, focused on some of the most important treatment questions in prostate cancer care today. Among the highlights is a featured oral presentation evaluating whether the Decipher Prostate test can help identify which patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer may benefit from short-term androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) when treated with dose-escalated radiation therapy.
Together, Veracyte’s ASTRO presentations are expected to reflect the continued movement toward more personalized, biology-informed prostate cancer care, with research spanning genomic information in radiation treatment decisions, long-term outcomes, biomarker analyses, and real-world evidence.
More information about Veracyte’s ASTRO 2026 presentations is available on our event page. Those interested in connecting with Veracyte at the meeting can also reach out through the page.
Returning to What Matters Most: Better Answers for Patients
As new data continue to emerge, Prostate Cancer Awareness Month offers an important reminder of why this work matters. Awareness is essential, but for patients facing a diagnosis, it is often the beginning of a longer and more personal journey.
That journey comes with difficult questions: What does my diagnosis mean? How aggressive is my cancer? What are my treatment options? What are the risks and benefits? Is more treatment likely to help me? Could some treatment be avoided?
For clinicians, the goal is to answer those questions with as much clarity and confidence as possible. And as prostate cancer care becomes more personalized, high-quality evidence will continue to play a central role in helping guide those decisions.
At Veracyte, we believe patients deserve answers that reflect the biology of their disease. Through the Decipher Prostate Genomic Classifier, we are working to help clinicians and patients navigate complex prostate cancer treatment choices with genomic insights supported by a growing body of research.
That work is ongoing. And during Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, we are reminded that behind every study, every test result, and every treatment decision is a person looking for answers. Through continued research and the growing body of data behind the Decipher Prostate test, Veracyte is working to help patients and clinicians move forward with greater confidence, clarity, and hope.