Prostate cancer molecular profiling: the Achilles heel for the implementation of precision medicine.

Abstract

Cancer has been mainly treated by traditional therapeutic approaches which do not consider the human genetic diversity and present limitations, probably as a consequence of a poor knowledge of both patient's genetic background and tumor biology. Due to genome project conclusion and large-scale gene analyses emergence, the therapeutic management of several prevalent and aggressive tumors has dramatically improved and represents the closest examples of a precision medicine intervention in this field. Nonetheless, prostate cancer (PCa) remains as a challenge to personalized medicine implementation, probably due to its notorious heterogeneous molecular profile. Cancer treatment personalized approaches rely on the premise that a well-defined panorama of tumor molecular alterations can help selecting new and specific therapeutic targets for its treatment and potentially discriminate tumors which behave differentially. Lately, molecular and genetic studies have been investigating PCa basis, revealing multiple recurrent genomic alterations that include mutations, DNA copy-number variations, rearrangements, and gene fusions, among others. In addition to the increment on PCa molecular biology knowledge, mapping the molecular alterations pattern of this neoplasia, especially the differences existent between tumors displaying distinct behaviors, could represent a great improvement concerning the identification of new targets, personalized medicine, and patients' management and prognosis.

• Authors: Eliane Gouvêa Oliveira-Barros, Pedro Nicolau-Neto, Nathalia Meireles Da Costa, Luís Felipe Ribeiro Pinto, Antonio Palumbo Jr, Luiz Eurico Nasciutti
• Journal: Cell biology international (Cell Biol Int) Vol. 41 Issue 11 Pg. 1239-1245 (Nov 2017) ISSN: 1095-8355 [Electronic] England
• PMID: 28477422 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Review)
• Copyright: © 2017 International Federation for Cell Biology.

Chemical References

• Biomarkers, Tumor

Topics

• Biomarkers, Tumor (genetics)
• Gene Expression Profiling
• High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing (methods)
• Humans
• Male
• Molecular Targeted Therapy
• Precision Medicine (methods)
• Prognosis
• Prostatic Neoplasms (genetics, therapy)
• Prostatic Neoplasms, Castration-Resistant (genetics, therapy)