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How is prostate cancer different from other types of cancer?
What we know from the tumor biology that prostate cancer is an extremely slow growing tumor,
that does not mean that patients will die of prostate cancer, in fact 25,000 men every
year in the United States die of prostate cancer. But these tumors are slow growing.
Our goal as physicians and neurologists is to identify those tumors that are much more
aggressive. Aggressive tumors tend to proliferate or grow rapidly and these are the cancers
that actually kill people. Up to this point, we have only had the Gleason score of what
the cells look like to try to determine the natural history of prostate cancer. There
is a lot of research that has been done recently and the genetic marker field is now becoming
sort of a new horizon where we are looking at ways to predict aggressiveness in patients
with prostate cancer. The Oncotype DX test is just one way in which we can use genetic
markers or profiles to try to determine the aggressiveness of these tumors. These tumors
that have a high GPS score or tend to be much more aggressive and these are the tumors that
one would probably choose a definitive intervention such as surgery or radiation rather than active
surveillance.
Some prostate cancers are high risk, aggressive, and more likely to spread. Others are low
risk, least likely to have bad outcomes. The biopsy says cancer, but current diagnostic
tools provide limited information about how aggressive a man's individual disease is,
so most men decide to treat prostate cancer immediately. Once treated, many men experience
serious long-term side effects like incontinence and *** impotence. Immediate treatment
is not always needed, but right now a man can't be sure if his cancer is the kind that
is likely to require treatment or if he is okay to wait for now. What if there was a
test that could determine how aggressive prostate cancer is. Genomic health is developing a
new test to do just that. By reviewing the underlying biology of the tumor and using
genes from multiple biologic pathways, the test can predict the aggressiveness of prostate
cancer when diagnosed, allowing a man to make a more informed treatment decision with confidence,
taking care of himself with more information and greater peace of mind.