ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2008) — An Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researcher has found a biomarker that may help improve the ability to predict if a man’s prostate cancer is going to come back after surgical removal. In order to make this discovery, researchers examined prostate cancer tissue samples that had been removed during surgical procedures on cancer patients. The researchers found that men whose tumors showed a silencing of the gene CDH13 had a five-fold increased risk of prostate cancer recurrence compared with men whose tumors showed no silencing of this gene, according to Joshi Alumkal, M.D., OHSU Cancer Institute member and assistant professor of medicine, (hematology/medical oncology), OHSU School of Medicine. In normal cells, this gene is active, but in some cancer cells it may be turned off, which leads to a propensity for metastasis, or spreading.
