Prostate Cancer: 1 Disease, 2 Mechanisms, European Molecular Biology Laboratory Study

While prostate cancer is the most common cancer in elderly Western men it also, but more rarely, strikes patients aged between 35 and 50. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in collaboration with several other research teams in Germany*, have discovered that such early-onset prostate cancers are triggered by a different mechanism from that which causes the disease at a later age. Their findings are published today in Cancer Cell, and might have important consequences for the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer in younger patients.