Gene test could save men from prostate surgery

Doctors have developed a technique that could save thousands of men from impotence by predicting how aggressive Prostate cancer is before surgery.

At present needle biopsies, blood and urine samples are unable to predict accurately how dangerous prostate cancer is and whether it is likely to progress.

This means that thousands of men may be having unnecessary preventive surgery, with serious side effects such as impotence.

Now a study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, has outlined a simple and reliable technique which can be carried out on needle biopsy samples.

The Checkerboard Tissue Microarray (TMA) method, developed by scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research, looks for the multiple markers of various genes associated with Prostate cancer - including the E2F3 gene. "Overexpression" of E2F3 - first identified by the institute - is a marker of how aggressive cancer will be.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer to affect men in the UK, with more than 30,000 diagnosed every year. Almost 10,000 men die from the disease each year.

Researchers said the new technique would allow them to investigate an enormous untapped resource of clinical specimens which were obtained at the time of cancer diagnosis.

This would allow them to identify markers of the cancer's aggressiveness.

Prostate cancer Definition
Prostate cancer involves a malignant tumor growth within the prostate gland.
Causes, incidence, and risk factors
The cause of prostate cancer is unknown, although some studies have shown a relationship between high dietary fat intake and increased testosterone levels. When testosterone levels are lowered either by surgical removal of the testicles (castration, orchiectomy) or by medication, prostate cancer can regress. There is no known association with Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).
They said the technique would be pivotal in developing a test for Prostate cancer aggressiveness which may ultimately prevent thousands of men undergoing surgery.

The tissues in the prostate gland, an organ at the base of the bladder in men, are either surgically removed or destroyed through radiotherapy as a way to treat the cancer. This radical surgery can have serious side effects such as incontinence and impotence.

Professor Colin Cooper, the Grand Charity of Freemasons' Chair of Molecular Biology at the institute, hopes to have a reliable test in place within two years.

He said: "This represents a real advance for the future management of .