Metastatic prostate cancer subtypes ‘prognostic’
Researchers have demonstrated that patients with castration-resistant disease fall into luminal and basal subtypes and these respond differently to therapy
Basal and luminal subtypes of prostate cancer, well known in primary tumours, also exist in metastases and likely shape therapeutic outcomes, US researchers report.
The finding brings closer the prospect of personalised treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), “the lethal form of the disease”, they wrote in JAMA Oncology.
One of the problems with determining the nature of metastases in prostate cancer is that, because they are often confined to bone, biopsies are difficult to obtain, the authors said.
Their retrospective study used tumour genomes and transcriptomes obtained from biopsies of metastases in 634 men across four separate cohorts, one being 157 autopsied decedents.
