Detection of Prostatic Hematogenous Tumor Cell Dissemination Using Prostate Specific-Membrane Antigen by Polymerase Chain Reaction

Abstract

In the past decade, prostate cancer has emerged as one of the most common diseases among men over 50 years of age.

To decrease the chance of disease recurrence, accurate preoperative staging is essential when considering a patient for radical surgery.

However, despite the commonly used preoperative factors such as serum PSA level, the Gleason score, the DRE results, CT findings and endorectal coil MRI, the final pathological analyses of prostate specimens in many patients reveal that the disease has extended beyond the gland.

The ideal pretreatment predictive factor would have a sensitivity for detecting tumor cells that have extended beyond the prostate, as prostate cancers have the highest chance of metastatic progression among all cancers .

For early detection of micrometastesis, amplification of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) sequences unique to cancer prostate cells in the circulation has been done using RT-PCR reaction.

PSMA (Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen), a 100 KDa integral membrane glycoprotein, is highly expressed in prostatic tumors and metastases, and is almost entirely prostate specific.