Study reveals new pathway to treat Prostate Cancer

A subset of treatment-resistant prostate cancer pathologically resembles small cell lung cancer rather than typical prostate cancer, Weill Cornell Medicine and University of Trento investigators discovered in a new study. The scientists say their findings may lead to more effective ways to diagnose and treat neuro-endocrine prostate cancer.
Therapies that cut off the hormone androgen, which fuels tumor growth, are commonly used to treat patients with advanced prostate cancer. While this is initially effective, patients often stop responding and develop treatment resistance. Some of these tumors transform from typical prostate cancer, called adeno-carcinoma, into neuro-endocrine prostate cancer, an event that scientists have increasingly observed but knew little about how or why it happened.
Weill Cornell Medicine investigators collaborated with scientists at the University of Trento. They used next-generation sequencing technologies to examine resistance across a spectrum of patients and discovered the genetic, epigenetic and molecular features that underlie neuro-endocrine prostate cancer. Their findings illuminate the disease's distinctive characteristics, which may enable researchers to develop bio-markers to help identify this subset of patients with prostate cancer less likely to respond to the next line of hormonal-based therapies. This large data-set can now also be used by researchers to develop new therapeutic approaches for patients.