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March 31st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda SATURDAY, March 31 (HealthDay News) — A noninvasive scan might
someday help doctors track the progress of prostate cancer and help guide
treatment, researchers report.
The imaging tool, known as a prostate cancer-specific radiotracer, has
so far only been tested successfully in mice. But a team from Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City said the technology could
help identify cases where prostate cancer has spread to the bone.
Radiotracers work by injecting a small amount of a compound tagged with
a radionuclide into patients. Using positron emission tomography — also
known as a PET scan — doctors are then able to better visualize tumors
and tumor spread.
In studies involving mice with prostate cancer, the researchers had the
radiotracer hone in on prostate-specific antigen (PSA), the same prostate
cancer marker used in the PSA test. They found that the PSA gravitated to
tissues containing prostate cancer that had already grown resistant to
standard hormone-based therapies.
The study also revealed the radiotracer could help identify cases where
prostate cancer had spread to the bone. The researchers pointed out
traditional bone scans are unable to differentiate between malignant and
nonmalignant lesions.
The findings were to be presented Saturday at the American Association
for Cancer Research annual meeting in Chicago, and are also being
published in Cancer Discovery.
If used on people, the researchers claimed that the radiotracer might
someday help doctors “personalize” treatment strategies for prostate
cancer and better manage the disease.
“The ultimate goal is to be able to predict the response of patients to
new and existing therapies at an early stage, thereby personalizing their
treatment and improving outcomes,” Michael J. Evans, research fellow in
the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center, explained in meeting news release.
Encouraged by their findings, the study’s authors said they hope to
begin a human trial next year.
Two prostate cancer experts said the tool, if borne out in patients,
could prove very useful.
Dr. Michael Schwartz is director of laparoscopy and minimally invasive
surgery at North Shore-LIJ Health System in Lake Success, N.Y. He noted
that, as of now, doctors typically rely on results of the PSA blood test
and/or standard diagnostic scans to help guide treatment decisions.
Both methods have their limits and, “while this study is very
preliminary, if this radiotracer technology can prove to detect very early
recurrence or metastasis in human patients, it could become extremely
useful in either the pre- or post-treatment setting in selecting a
treatment algorithm,” Schwartz said. “It also may help reduce the need for
biopsy of possible metastatic lesions.”
Dr. Erik Goluboff, an attending urologist at Beth Israel Medical
Center, New York City, 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.”
However, Goluboff also noted that research from animal-based studies
does not always pan out in humans and “further, larger studies are of
course required to confirm these findings.”
More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute provides more information on
prostate cancer.
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