Two new methods
New biomarker will reveal aggressive prostate cancer
Sergey Kolenov, Hi-tech+
The main task of doctors in the fight against prostate cancer is to distinguish aggressive tumors from those that do not require intensive treatment. A new biomarker discovered by British scientists will help to do this. And experts from Australia have created a new imaging method that will track the presence of metastases.
Prostate cancer is considered one of the most common types of cancer in men. Although most cases develop very slowly and do not require intensive treatment, sometimes the tumor behaves very aggressively and gives metastases. The task of doctors is to identify aggressive forms of prostate cancer at an early stage. Unfortunately, this is not easy to do.
Specialists from University of East Anglia, whose work tells New Atlas, decided to find out how the activity of genes affects the aggressiveness of prostate cancer. To do this, they carefully studied 2,000 tumor samples.
It turned out that some tumor cells are characterized by a peculiar pattern of gene activity. The researchers named this cell subtype DESNT. The analysis showed that the more such cells there are in the tumor, the higher the rate of prostate cancer development. The authors hope that DESNT will become a reliable biomarker with which it will be possible to identify cases requiring rapid invasive treatment.
Article by Luca et al. A novel stratification framework for predicting outcome in patients with prostate cancer is published in the British Journal of Cancer – VM.
Another approach to the fight against prostate cancer was presented by Australian researchers from the Peter McCallum Center. They have developed a new imaging method to detect cases of tumor recurrence after surgery or radiation therapy.
The new technique is a combination of computed tomography and positron emission tomography. The patient is injected with a gallium-68 labeled prostatic specific membrane antigen (prostate-specific membrane antigen, PSMA, which specifically attaches to malignant cells, and then a scan is performed. As a result, doctors can see both changes in the structure of the body and cancer cells circulating in the blood.
Experiments have shown that the combined technique detects prostate cancer metastases in 92% of cases. For comparison, the accuracy of the traditional approach is only 65%.
Article by Hofman et al. Prostate-specific membrane antigen PET-CT in patients with high-risk prostate cancer before curative-intent surgery or radiotherapy (proPSMA): a prospective, randomized, multi-centre study published in The Lancet – VM journal.
Unfortunately, the new approach is more expensive than the traditional ones. Currently, researchers are trying to assess the economic effect of its widespread introduction. Perhaps they will be able to prove that an accurate prognosis of prostate cancer reduces long-term health care costs.
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