The "Achilles heel" of prostate cancer

A recent study published in Cancer Discovery claims to have identified a weakness, an "Achilles heel" of some prostate tumors . According to the authors, this weakness may be the target of new treatments for neuroendocrine prostate cancer, the most lethal subtype of the disease.

Mark Rubin, Weill Cornell Medical College (USA), explains that while less than 2% of men with prostate cancer have this type of tumor, other more common variants, such as prostate cancer, could also become a neuroendocrine prostate tumor, whose prognosis would be grim.

"This is a very lethal prostate cancer . This study is the largest of its kind, and shows that we may be able to treat this disease so aggressive. "

Inhibitor

Rubin's team analyzed the sequence of RNA samples from seven types of neuroendocrine prostate cancer, 30 prostate adenocarcinomas and five benign prostate tissue samples. They found that genes and MYCN are overexpressed AURKA and expanded by 40% of neuroendocrine prostate cancers and 5% of prostate adenocarcinomas.

It has also seen that treatment with a new inhibitor PHA-739358 stopped the growth of neuroendocrine tumors . The role of PHA-739358 has been studied in prostate tumors before without success, although in most cases not been analyzed in neuroendocrine cancers.