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Landmarks in prostate cancer diagnosis: the biomarkers
Author(s) -
Artibani Walter
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
bju international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.773
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1464-410X
pISSN - 1464-4096
DOI - 10.1111/j.1464-410x.2012.011429.x
Subject(s) - prostate cancer , medicine , biomarker , prostate specific antigen , cancer , prostate , oncology , diagnostic biomarker , pca3 , urine , urology , biology , biochemistry
• The main diagnostic biomarker in current use is prostate‐specific antigen (PSA) and it is one of the recommended diagnostic tools from the European Association of Urology Guidelines on prostate cancer. • One of the challenges with PSA is that men with very low levels of PSA can harbour prostate cancer, making it difficult to set a lower limit. • Several modifications to PSA biomarker detection have been suggested to improve its sensitivity and selectivity including PSA density, free:total PSA, PSA velocity/doubling time and different PSA isoforms. • However, there remains a need to improve accuracy of diagnosis and this has led to research in to a number of promising new biomarkers. • These include genetic and blood or urine based biomarkers. The most advanced of these is prostate cancer gene 3 found in urine and developed into a commercial test in 2006. • Other promising markers include circulating tumour cells (CTC) in blood, which have been correlated with survival in castration‐resistant prostate cancer. A system for evaluating CTC was approved by the USA Food and Drug Administration in 2008.