A BREAKTHROUGH by Adelaide University researchers is set to lead to a blood test predicting whether prostate cancer will spread to other parts of the body.
Researchers at the university have uncovered a new pathway which regulates the spread of prostate cancer around the body.
The discovery of how also cancer spreads from prostate tumours also identifies potential new "targets" for drugs.
"Prostate cancers only kill men after they have spread or 'metastasised' from the prostate," project leader Dr Luke Selth said, adding that this discovery could ultimately save lives.
"The identification of markers that accurately predict, at an early stage, prostate tumours that are likely to metastasise could guide the urgency and aggressiveness of treatment - and this could save lives," he said.
The international research team - led by the University of Adelaide and including the University of Michigan, Vancouver Prostate Centre, the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins University - showed that a gene-regulating molecule called miR-194 promotes cancer metastasis by stopping a key protein called SOCS2 (which suppresses the spread of cancer cells) from doing its job.
"In previous work, we had found that a high level of miR-194 in a patient's blood was associated with rapid relapse of prostate cancer following surgical removal of the tumour," says Dr Selth.
"Importantly, measuring miR-194 in a patient's blood at the time of diagnosis could become a test for the likelihood of metastasis."
He said patients with high levels of miR-194 in their blood could receive more aggressive treatment to reduce the chance of the cancer spreading to other parts of the body.
The findings were published in the journal Cancer Research.
Dr Selth's team is currently testing this idea using larger patient groups to validate their findings.
He said the miR-194 molecule was also a potential target for new drugs.
"There are currently no drugs that effectively inhibit the spread of prostate cancer," Dr Selth said.
"We propose that inhibiting (the molecule) could reduce rates of metastasis in patients with aggressive disease - but the development of a drug to achieve this goal is still a long way off."
