New liquid biopsy technology: a urine test to predict the risk of cancer progression within 5 years

▎Editor of WuXi AppTec content team Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancer types in men, and it usually develops slowly
.

Some patients may not even need treatment for life on the premise that the tumor does not progress
.

But not all patients can be such lucky ones, so doctors need to check patients regularly to determine the changes in tumors
.

At present, the most common related screening methods include blood tests, MRI, and invasive biopsy.
None of these methods can predict whether prostate cancer will progress to an aggressive type
.

"There is an urgent need for a method that can be used to diagnose and predict prostate cancer, and it is best done without invading the patient's body," said Dr.
Jeremy Clark.
According to their new research published on Life, urine can bear this.
One important task
.

They call this method the Prostate Urine Risk Test (PUR)
.

In previous research, Dr.
Clark found that based on the results of PUR, it is possible to distinguish which men have a higher risk of cancer and require immediate treatment, and those who have a lower cancer risk coefficient and can choose to observe
.

But in fact, there are still some people who fall into the middle "medium risk" group.
For example, many prostate cancer patients will fall into this group after PUR testing
.

"For this group of people, what kind of treatment advice we should provide has become a problem," Dr.
Clark said
.

The PUR test they designed will analyze a variety of biomarkers, including prostate cancer-specific RNA transcription factors, and prostate cancer-specific genes that contain probes for 36 genes
.

Image source: 123RF According to the levels of these markers in the patient's urine, researchers can classify patients into risk 1-4
.

In the current prostate cancer grading system, the Gleason grading (GG) divides the differentiation of cancer into 1-5 grades based on histological characteristics, of which grade 1 is the best and grade 5 is the worst
.

Are these two levels relevant before? The researchers managed to obtain tumor samples from some patients.
After their comparison, they found that when the patient was classified as PUR 4 risk by urine test, a large number of grade 4 cancer cells would appear in samples still at Gleason 2-3 level.
This shows that Their tumors are developing in a malignant direction
.

For patients whose Gleason classification is still 1-2, their PUR-4 signals are basically the same
.

According to their past data, only one urine sample analysis can predict the progression of prostate cancer in the next 5 years
.

"This shows that the PUR test can provide treatment guidance for patients," Dr.
Clark said.
"Who needs to be eradicated immediately and who can be treated conservatively may be known by a urine test
.

" At present, researchers are trying to carry out a larger cohort.
Research further validates the results
.

If successful, it means that many prostate cancer patients will have a non-invasive way to determine the direction of the disease, and get rid of the psychological and physical problems of cancer as soon as possible
.

Reference: [1] Prostate cancer urine test identifies good prognosis patients.
Retrieved Nov 4th, 2021 from https://medicalxpress.
com/news/2021-11-prostate-cancer-urine-good-prognosis.
html[2] Ball , RY, et al.
The Urine Biomarker PUR-4 Is Positively Associated with the Amount of Gleason 4 in Human Prostate Cancers.
Life 2021, 11, 1172.
DOI:10.
3390/life11111172