Prostate cancer comes in three distinct molecular subtypes, each of which correlates with distant metastasis-free survival, according to a presentation at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) meeting in Boston.
The identification of the prostate cancer subtypes should pave the way for future research to determine how patients will respond to treatment and help further development of personalized medicine in prostate cancer care, according to lead author Dr. Daniel Spratt of the University of Michigan.
Spratt and colleagues analyzed RNA expression patterns in 4,236 samples from nine separate groups of men treated with radical prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer. They identified three molecular subtypes of prostate cancer that could be characterized through a profile of 100 distinct genes, which the team named the Prostate Cancer 100.
"We have discovered and independently validated a highly stable 100-gene intrinsic molecular profile of prostate cancer that is both prognostic and predictive for radiation therapy," Spratt said in a statement from ASTRO. "We believe that these subtypes reflect truly distinctive underlying biology and that this work represents a significant advance in our understanding of prostate cancer biology."
