Nat Commun: Scientists reveal new molecular mechanisms for metastatic prostate cancer.

12, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Nature Communications, scientists from the University of Tampere and others have revealed a special mechanism that may help explain the metastasis of prostate cancer; As it develops, multiple clones of cancer cells that are spatially mixed may attack the organs around the prostate, however, only one dominant cell clone can systematically spread and metasell in the body, and new subcellular clones may produce and mediate the constant metastasis of cancer cells during the metastasis process.
Photo Source: Wikipedia researchers also found that the spread or spread of the disease may vary from patient to patient, and that genetic drivers that occur in cancer cell cloning may help effectively distinguish between those cell subclonals that spread throughout the body and which subclonals are confined to each patient's prostate.
this paper, researchers analyzed samples from 10 prostate cancer patients from diagnosis to death from metastatic disease.
In this study, researchers performed the first genome-evolutionary combination analysis of local and metastatic prostate cancer, and were able to detect these particular evolutionary signals from patients' blood and cerebrospinal fluids, such as biopsies; When cancer DNA is found, the cloning of the main cancer cells that connect the cancer metastatic lesions can be detected, and the detection of cancer cell subclonals is variable; it seems reasonable to use liquid living tissue tests to monitor metastatic prostate cancer, although it does not always perfectly reflect the condition in the patient's body, so researchers need to further improve and expand these findings.
researcher Professor Steven Bova said the results of this paper show that the subclonal of prostate cancer may not have spread and only existed in the prostate, but not in the patient's blood, which, if confirmed in a larger study, may mean that the presence of circulating tumor DNA itself could diagnose metastatic prostate cancer.
metastatic prostate cancer usually spreads to the brain and forms subdural metastasis, and analysis of cerebrospinal fluid in patients with metastatic prostate cancer may help identify which men are more susceptible to epidural metastasis and which cancer cells are subclonal in their bodies, which may have some therapeutic significance, as cancer cell subclonals may not respond the same to therapy.
Finally, the researchers said they used tissue and liquid biopsy tissue samples from 33 patients with metastatic prostate cancer in the study, while the researchers analyzed the patient's medical history and agreed to donate their bodies after their death for further study.
() Original source: Woodcock, D.J., Riabchenko, E., Taavitsainen, S. et al. Prostate cancer evolution from multilineage primary to single lineage metastases with ideas for liquid biopsy. Nat Commun 11, 5070 (2020). doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18843-5.