title: Landmarks in prostate cancer diagnosis: the biomarkers.
abstract: • The main diagnostic biomarker in current use is prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and it is one of the recommended diagnostic tools from the European Association of Urology Guidelines on prostate cancer. • One of the challenges with PSA is that men with very low levels of PSA can harbour prostate cancer, making it difficult to set a lower limit. • Several modifications to PSA biomarker detection have been suggested to improve its sensitivity and selectivity including PSA density, free:total PSA, PSA velocity/doubling time and different PSA isoforms. • However, there remains a need to improve accuracy of diagnosis and this has led to research in to a number of promising new biomarkers. • These include genetic and blood or urine based biomarkers. The most advanced of these is prostate cancer gene 3 found in urine and developed into a commercial test in 2006. • Other promising markers include circulating tumour cells (CTC) in blood, which have been correlated with survival in castration-resistant prostate cancer. A system for evaluating CTC was approved by the USA Food and Drug Administration in 2008.
authors.affiliation: Department Urology, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. walter.artibani@univr.it
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Artibani
mesh_terms: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood* / Q000652:urine; D055088:Early Detection of Cancer / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen / Q000097:blood*; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen