Identifying Somatic Genetic Changes in Prostate Cancer

摘要

Metastatic prostate cancer is not a curable disease and approximately 30% of men undergoing radical prostectomy will relapse, so there is a need to identify new markers of development and progression of prostate cancer, particularly those that can be used as potential therapeutic targets. We are using aCGH and expression profiling to examine prostate cancers from men whom have been followed for 10 years on average. We are in the process of reviewing prostate specimens for cancer, macrodissecting them, extracting DNA and RNA for array based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) and expression profiling. In this progress report, we review our progress to date, which includes identifying many of the previous known genes found to be commonly amplified and deleted in prostate cancer, such as TERT and HRAS, and NKX3-1 and PTEN, respectively. In addition, we have identified deletions and amplifications of novel genes not been shown to be changed in prostate cancer previously. Of greatest interest is GRB2, which functions upstream of the Ras signaling pathway. Ras signaling has been postulated to be important in androgen independent prostate cancer progression. In addition, targeted chemotherapy is being developed for GRB2 making it an important gene to understand further in prostate cancer.