University of Michigan researchers may have just taken us one step closer to a simple urine test that tells how aggressive a prostate cancer might be meaning that prostate cancer prognosis just got better.
One of the challenges of this type of cancer is telling the aggressive form of the disease from the more laid-back version. Not being able to tell them apart prompts treatment (not to mention side effects and stress) that might not even be necessary.
Using a powerful new science known as metabolomics, the team found an obscure amino acid derivative, known as sarcosine that may tell whether a patient has an aggressive or benign form of the disease.
The groundbreaking work displays the value of metabolomics, a new technology that uses computer driven robots, which can quickly identify all the chemicals that build up in the cells of the body. This buildup consists of metabolites – end products of the huge number of biochemical reactions that take place in the cells of the body. Sarcosine is one of these.
What the team did was compare the metabolites from normal cells to those of both aggressive and non-aggressive prostate cancer cells, finding ten (out of 1,126) metabolites that distinguish normal cells from cancer cells.
What’s even more intriguing, the metabolites tend to increase or decrease as the prostate cancer cells become more aggressive. Cancer free cells have no sign of sarcosine.
But that’s not all…
When benign prostate cancer cells are exposed to sarcosine they turn nasty, aggressive and invasive. When aggressive cancer cells are deprived of sarcosine they become much less aggressive.
Should the work be confirmed and validated by larger studies, these findings have amazing applications for the diagnosis and treatment of dangerous prostate cancer.
The leader of the study, Arul M. Chinnaiyan, MD, PhD, a professor of pathology and urology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, explains, “We have tantalizing evidence that this sarcosine pathway may be involved in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer.”
The study found that levels of sarcosine were elevated in 79% of the aggressive prostate cancer samples, 42% of the early stage cancer samples and none of the cancer-free samples.
According to the work, published in a February issue of Nature, the sarcosine was better at detecting advanced cancers than the test in use now, the traditional prostate specific antigen, PSA, test.
The study also found that sarcosine may be involved with the same pathways inked to cancer invasiveness making the substance a potential cancer treatment.
Still, more work is needed. Samples must be taken from large numbers of men, at all different stages of disease, before markers can be accurately developed.
Estimates from the American Cancer Society have over 186,000 American men diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008; the disease will claim over 28,000 lives.
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Researchers Find A Piece Of The Prostate Cancer Puzzle… continued
Four out of five cases are diagnosed in men over 65, and only rarely in men under 50. No one knows what causes prostate cancer, but experts generally agree that what you eat (large amounts of fat from red meats) probably increases your risk.
Another theory suggests that fats trigger hormones like testosterone that speed the growth of prostate cancer or push dormant cells into action.
Today there are a variety of different treatments for this disease of older men – newer techniques, surgeries as well as up and coming medications are all options available to help manage prostate cancer prognosis . Finding the right doctor, and treatment, is key as you wait for more work to be done.
