[Determination of thymidine phosphorylase in adenoma and cancer of the human prostate].

The presence of thymidine phosphorylase was observed in healthy, adenomatous and tumoral prostatic cells. In healthy and adenomatous tissues the enzyme activity was recovered as a single peak after ion exchange chromatography on DEAE-Sephadex gel. On the contrary, two forms of thymidine phosphorylase were found in prostatic cancers, one of them, with high activity appeared consequently as a characteristic feature of prostatic tumoral cells.