Mol A J M, Geldof A A, Meijer G A, van der Poel H G, van Moorselaar R J A
Department of Urology, VU University Medical Center, PO Box 7057, 1007, MB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 2007 Oct;133(10):687-95. doi: 10.1007/s00432-007-0235-8. Epub 2007 May 23.
Today's treatment and diagnosis of prostate cancer still exhibit major limitations. The search for new and additional prognostic markers is therefore still an actual field of interest. Potential markers involved in numerous biological processes in the tumor cell have been investigated intensively. For therapeutic interventions it is important to distinguish between harmless and aggressive disease in an early stage. Therefore the subject of this review is limited to markers associated with those functional processes, which discriminate early stage aggressive, metastatic cancer from harmless disease. Important processes in this respect are: altered cell adhesion and cellular migration. E-cadherin, N-cadherin, beta-catenin, integrins, focal adhesion kinase, connexins and matrix metalloproteinases all appear promising biological markers associated with the early stage metastatic process in prostate cancer. Here we discuss their potential to become valid biological markers based on literature data. Thus far, none of these markers proved to be a valid individual marker by itself due to prostate cancer heterogeneity and transient expression. Analyzing a combination of the potential markers discussed in this review is expected to be a better approach toward discriminating high- from low-risk tumors in an early stage of prostate cancer.
如今，前列腺癌的治疗和诊断仍存在重大局限性。因此，寻找新的及更多的预后标志物仍是当前一个备受关注的领域。人们对肿瘤细胞中众多生物过程所涉及的潜在标志物进行了深入研究。对于治疗干预而言，在早期区分无害疾病和侵袭性疾病至关重要。因此，本综述的主题仅限于与那些能够将早期侵袭性转移性癌症与无害疾病区分开来的功能过程相关的标志物。这方面的重要过程包括：细胞黏附改变和细胞迁移。E-钙黏蛋白、N-钙黏蛋白、β-连环蛋白、整合素、黏着斑激酶、连接蛋白和基质金属蛋白酶似乎都是与前列腺癌早期转移过程相关的有前景的生物标志物。在此，我们根据文献数据讨论它们成为有效生物标志物的潜力。迄今为止，由于前列腺癌的异质性和瞬时表达，这些标志物中没有一个本身被证明是有效的单个标志物。分析本综述中讨论的潜在标志物的组合有望成为在前列腺癌早期区分高风险和低风险肿瘤的更好方法。
