So far, essentially two subtypes of malignant tumors of the prostate gland in men have been known, which are referred to as androgen-dependent and neuroendocrine. A research team has now identified a third type, called stem cell-like because some genes typical of stem cells are active in these cancer cells.
“We didn’t know if we would find other subtypes,” said Dr. Yu Chen of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “We were happy and surprised that there was this fairly large group of patients with tumors that had not been described before.” He and his team had created novel prostate cancer models from 40 different patient tumors: difficult to multiply. While there are hundreds of melanoma and lung cancer cell lines, only three or four prostate cancer cell lines are useful.”
The team found a remedy by growing organoids from pieces of tumors. These are organ-like structures – a kind of avatar of the tumor of the respective patient. These can be used to examine the properties of the tumors, e.g. B. which genes are switched on or off in the cells. This is how they found the new prostate subtype.
They looked for this variant in a biobank with 366 prostate tumors and found it surprisingly often: it was the second most common group following the androgen-dependent type. The researchers now hope that this knowledge can be used to develop new treatment options. They’re already working with several companies to test whether certain drugs can block the growth of this subtype.
Those: DOI 10.1126/science.abe1505
