THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

An article in the current issue of Cancer Research discusses some work that might lead to the type of test we really need to be able to diagnose clinically significant prostate cancer at an early stage and differentiate between this type of prostate cancer and indolent disease.

Rickman et al. have reported that messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) transcribed from a gene fusion product known as SLC45A3-ELK4 can be detected at high levels from the urine of a subset of patients at risk for prostate cancer, and it is already known that the ELK4 gene is androgen regulated, involved in promoting cell growth, and highly expressed in a subset of prostate cancer patients.

Now we don’t know yet whether this specific genetic modification and its transcription product (the mRNA) can specifically discriminate between clinically significant and indolent disease. The point, however, is that it is likely to be one or more markers of this type — nucleic acids and/or proteins that can be isolated from urine or perhaps from semen — that will give us a better way to know that a man is at high risk for clinically progressive prostate cancer at a relatively early age.

What Rickman et al. have shown to date is that expression of the SLC45A3-ELK4 mRNA transcript is heterogeneous, highly induced in a subset of prostate cancers, androgen regulated, and most commonly occurs through a mechanism known as “trans-splicing” which is not a simple chromosomal rearrangement. Furthermore, because the mRNA can be identified in urine, no invasive procedure would be necessary to test for the level of this marker in man. The implications of this work are also discussed in an article on Science Daily.

Filed under: Diagnosis, Risk Tagged: | mRNA, new, SLC45A3-ELK4, test