New method found to treat deadly prostate cancer
18 November 2011 00:00 in Scientific Developments/Breakthroughs
A scientific study has established a new means of treating neuroendocrine prostate cancers, the most lethal subtype of the disease.
Researchers from the Weill Cornell Medical College have used sophisticated RNA sequencing technology to profile seven neuroendocrine prostate cancers, 30 prostate adenocarcinomas and five benign samples of prostate tissue.
It was found that two genes, AURKA and MYCN, were notably overexpressed and amplified among neuroendocrine prostate cancer patients, a condition that can be treated using the investigational aurora kinase inhibitor PHA-739358.
According to Dr Mark Rubin, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the college, this shows that previous studies of PHA-739358 may have failed because it had not been assessed among neuroendocrine cancer patients before.
"Prostate cancer is not a homogenous disease. We need to continue to sort out the aggressive disease from the indolent and treat accordingly," he said.
This comes after a British Journal of Cancer study recently suggested that gene testing younger prostate cancer patients could help to provide better targeted treatments.
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