Predicting prostate cancer: Pitt-developed test identifies new methods for treatment

Pitt-developed test is 91 percent accurate for aggressive prostate cancer recurrence.

2014-09-15

(Press-News.org) PITTSBURGH, Sept. 15, 2014 – A genetic discovery out of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is leading to a highly accurate test for aggressive prostate cancer and identifies new avenues for treatment.

The analysis, published today in the American Journal of Pathology, found that prostate cancer patients who carry certain genetic mutations have a 91 percent chance of their cancer recurring. This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Cancer Society and University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI).

"Being able to say, with such certainty, that a patient is nearly guaranteed to see a recurrence of his prostate cancer means that doctors and patients can elect to be more aggressive in treating the cancer, knowing that the benefits likely outweigh the risks," said Jian-Hua Luo, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology, Pitt School of Medicine and member of UPCI. "Eventually, this could lead to a cure for prostate cancer through genetic therapy. With this discovery, we're at the tip of the iceberg in terms of possibilities for improving patient outcomes."

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men (behind skin cancer), with one in seven men diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. The American Cancer Society estimates that this year in the U.S., about 233,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed, and 29,480 men will die of prostate cancer.

Despite the high incidence rate, only a fraction of men diagnosed with prostate cancer develop metastases, and even fewer die from the disease.

"In some cases, this can make the treatment more dangerous than the disease, so doctors need more accurate tests to tell them which patients would most benefit from aggressive therapies, such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy," said Dr. Luo.

Dr. Luo and his team sequenced the entire genome of prostate tissue samples from five prostate cancer patients who experienced aggressive recurrence of their cancer and compared them to normal tissue samples from men without cancer.

In the patients with prostate cancer recurrence, they identified 76 genetic fusion transcripts, which are hybrid genes formed from two previously separate genes and often are associated with cancer. After further testing, eight of the genetic fusion transcripts were found to be strongly associated with prostate cancer.

The researchers then screened for the eight fusion transcripts in 127 samples from patients with aggressive prostate cancer recurrence, 106 samples from prostate cancer patients with no recurrence at least five years after surgery, and 46 samples from prostate cancer patients with no recurrence less than five years after surgery. The samples came from UPMC, Stanford University Medical Center and University of Wisconsin Madison Medical Center.

In those samples, 91 percent with aggressive recurrence of their prostate cancer were positive for at least one of the fusion transcripts. Two of the fusion transcripts in particular were strongly associated with poor outcomes — none of the patients whose samples contained them survived to five years.

In contrast, 68 percent of patients whose samples did not contain at least one of the transcripts remained cancer-free.

Dr. Luo said if continued clinical trials of the test do well, it could be available to all prostate cancer patients in a few years.

In addition, studies are being developed to further investigate the genetic fusion transcripts most strongly associated with aggressive prostate cancer. Drugs and therapies could be developed to correct or stop the mutations, thereby halting the cancer progression, Dr. Luo explained.

INFORMATION: Additional researchers on this study are Yan P. Yu, M.D., Ph.D., Ying Ding, Ph.D., Zhanghui Chen, Ph.D., Silvia Liu, B.S., Amantha Michalopoulos, B.S., Riu Chen, B.S., Kathleen Cieply, M.S., Alyssa Luvison, B.S., Bao-Guo Ren, M.D., Joel B. Nelson, M.D., George Michalopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., and George C. Tseng, Sc.D., all of Pitt; Zulfiqar G. Gulzar, Ph.D., and James D. Brooks, M.D., both of Stanford; and Bing Yang, Ph.D., and David Jarrard, M.D., both of the University of Wisconsin.

This research was supported by the NIH grants RO1 CA098249 and 1U01CA152737-01, American Cancer Society grant RSG-08-137-01-CNE and UPCI.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Scientists identify the master regulator of cells' heat shock response

2014-09-15

Heat shock proteins protect the molecules in all human and animal cells with factors that regulate their production and work as thermostats. In new research published Sept. 16 in the journal eLife, scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere report for the first time that a protein called translation elongation factor eEF1A1 orchestrates the entire process of the heart shock response. By doing so, eEF1A1 supports overall protein homeostasis inside the cell, ensuring that it functions properly under various internal and external stress conditions. The researchers ...

Research offers new way to predict hurricane strength, destruction

2014-09-15

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A new study by Florida State University researchers demonstrates a different way of projecting a hurricane's strength and intensity that could give the public a better idea of a storm's potential for destruction. Vasu Misra, associate professor of meteorology and co-director of the Florida Climate Institute, and fourth-year doctoral student Michael Kozar introduce in the Monthly Weather Review of the American Meteorological Society a new statistical model that complements hurricane forecasting by showing the size of storms, not just the wind speed. The ...

This is your brain on snacks -- brain stimulation affects craving and consumption

2014-09-15

September 15, 2014 - Magnetic stimulation of a brain area involved in "executive function" affects cravings for and consumption of calorie-dense snack foods, reports a study in the September issue of Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. After stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), young women experience increased cravings for high-calorie snacks—and eat more of those foods when ...

Delay in age of walking can herald muscular dystrophy in boys with cognitive delays

2014-09-15

The timing of a toddler's first steps is an important developmental milestone, but a slight delay in walking is typically not a cause of concern by itself. Now a duo of Johns Hopkins researchers has found that when walking and cognitive delays occur in concert, the combination could comprise the earliest of signals heralding a rare but devastating disorder known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The study, published ahead of print in The Journal of Pediatrics and conducted by a medical student and a pediatric neurologist, reveals that delays in the onset of walking ...

Caregivers of family members newly diagnosed with mental illness at risk for anxiety

2014-09-15

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Nursing, who studied the emotional distress of caring for a family member diagnosed with a mental illness, found anxiety is high for the primary caregiver at the initial diagnosis or early in the course of the illness and decreases over time. "This finding is significant," said Jaclene A. Zauszniewski, PhD, RN-BC, FAAN, the Kate Hanna Harvey Professor of Community Health at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and study's corresponding author. She attributes the differences to possibly two factors: the family ...

Working long hours may increase risk of coronary heart disease

2014-09-15

Working more than a 40-hour week has been linked to stress, dissatisfaction, and compromised health, and now new research on 8,350 Korean adults finds that it may also increase one's risk of developing coronary heart disease, or narrowing of the blood vessels that supply blood and oxygen to the heart. "The longer hours employees worked, the higher their chances of developing coronary heart disease within 10 years, with those working 61 to 70 hours having a 42% increased likelihood of developing the disease, those working 71 to 80 hours having a 63% increased likelihood, ...

Study finds drop in death rates from strokes over last 2 decades

2014-09-15

Despite the significant reduction in the overall incidence and death rates from strokes in the United States over the past twenty years, more attention needs to be paid to specific age groups, a recent study found. The new research, conducted by Dr. Silvia Koton of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, Prof. Josef Coresh of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a team of experts at Hopkins, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the University of Arizona, found a 24 percent ...

Genes may help explain why some people are naturally more interested in music than others

2014-09-15

Research suggests that genes that affect hearing and cognitive function may play roles in one's musical aptitude, or the ability to understand and perceive rhythm, pitch, timbre, tone durations, and formal structure in music. The authors of a BioEssays article explain that extremes in musical aptitude (extreme capacity/no capacity) are rare within a population, with the majority of individuals having moderate aptitude. "This is a typical feature of a complex trait attributable to several underlying genes, and it is influenced to varying degrees by environmental factors, ...

How are hybridized species affecting wildlife?

2014-09-15

Researchers who transplanted combinations of wild, domesticated, and domesticated-wild hybridized populations of a fish species to new environments found that within 5 to 11 generations, selection could remove introduced foreign genes from wild populations that hybridized with domesticated populations. The Evolutionary Applications study provides evidence that natural selection, over time, removes the adaptive advantages that hybridized populations experience as a result of increased genetic diversity. "The results may be useful for policy makers who classify the protection ...

When casualties increased, war coverage became more negative

2014-09-15

As the number of U.S. casualties rose in Afghanistan, reporters filed more stories about the conflict and those articles grew increasingly negative about both the war effort and the military, according to a Penn State researcher. "When the war in Afghanistan started, the tone of the stories that reporters filed was generally neutral," said Michel Haigh, associate professor of communications. "However, over time, and as casualties increased, the coverage became more negative." In 2003, as the media began to focus more on the conflict in Iraq, reporters wrote less than 20 ...

Predicting prostate cancer: Pitt-developed test identifies new methods for treatment

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: