Screening men with a history of prostate cancer for certain gene mutations could help identify men who are most at risk.
A research team pinpointed 14 mutations that were considered "cancer genes," an Institute of Cancer Research news release reported.
The findings suggest that some men have a genetic profile that gives them a higher risk of life-threatening prostate cancer. The finding could help researchers work towards a more effective treatment for advanced prostate cancer.
"One of the important messages to come out of our study is that mutations to at least eight genes - and probably many more - greatly increase the risk of aggressive prostate cancer. Any future screening programme would need to assess as many of these genes as possible - more than we currently look for in women at risk of breast cancer, for example," study co-leader Dr Zsofia Kote-Jarai, Senior Staff Scientist at The Institute of Cancer Research London, said in the news release.
The researchers looked at 191 men with prostate cancer; they used "second generation" sequencing technology to look at mutations in 22 different genes. They looked at men who had three or more cases of advanced prostate cancer in their close family history.
"Our study shows the potential benefit of putting prostate cancer on a par with cancers such as breast cancer when it comes to genetic testing. Although ours was a small, first-stage study, we proved that testing for known cancer mutations can pick out men who are destined to have a more aggressive form of prostate cancer," study co-leader Professor Ros Eeles, Professor of Oncogenics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Honorary Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said in the news release.
"We urgently need to understand more about which men are at risk of developing prostate cancer and in particular aggressive forms of the disease. Genetic testing to predict risk could [revolutionize] how we treat the 40,000 men diagnosed with the disease every year in the [U.K]. These results are exciting as they add to the growing weight of evidence that men with a family history of prostate cancer who possess certain genes may be at higher risk, providing us with another crucial piece of the jigsaw," Doctor Iain Frame, Director of Research at Prostate Cancer UK, said in the news release.
