Researchers have reported that a non-invasive scan may someday help medical practitioners track the progress of prostate cancer and help guide treatment.
Known as a prostate cancer-specific radiotracer, the imaging tool has only been tested successfully in mice so far but a team from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City said this technology may help determine cases where prostate cancer has spread to the bone.
Findings of the study were to be presented Saturday at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Chicago, and are also being published in Cancer Discovery.
Dr. Erik Goluboff, an attending urologist atBeth Israel Medical Center,New YorkCity, agreed that, “this is an exciting study using a novel radiotracer to detect PSA-expressing tissues throughout the body.”
He believes that the new tool’s “greatest strength would be in monitoring changes in PSA expression in tissues as a result of various treatments. If a treatment showed a marked change, it could continue to be used in that patient, hence “personalized” medicine. If a specific change did not occur, that treatment could be abandoned and another tried instead. Since these changes could not be detected based on a PSA blood test alone, this new test would be very helpful in determining early on which therapy to choose in a given patient.”
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Tags: prostate cancer, PSA blood test
