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Over 80% of men with advanced prostate cancer respond to standard treatment with continuous androgen deprivation therapy. Most of these patients, however, go on to develop androgen resistance and disease progression. The authors of this Viewpoint propose that intermittent androgen deprivation should be the standard therapy in advanced prostate cancer.
In epithelial ovarian cancer, gene-expression profiling has been used to provide prognostic information, to predict response to first-line platinum-based chemotherapy, and to discriminate between different histologic subtypes. The authors of this Review summarize the contributions of gene-expression profiling to the diagnosis and management of epithelial ovarian cancer and discuss ways in which this technique could become a useful tool in clinical management.
Technologies such as mass spectrometry, and protein and DNA arrays, have enabled simultaneous examination of thousands of proteins and genes, giving opportunities to identify distinguishing signatures for cancer diagnosis and classification and prediction of therapeutic response. The authors provide an overview of how the current cancer biomarkers were discovered and their associated limitations, discuss the utilization of these emerging technologies, and review their potential to revolutionize biomarker discovery.
Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is an important and clinically relevant therapeutic target. Temsirolimus has significantly improved overall survival rates in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma, thereby validating the importance of mTOR in the natural history of this disease. This Review discusses the clinical development of temsirolimus, its novel mechanism of action, and the investigational strategies for targeting mTOR in other tumor types.
Our understanding of the pathogenesis of tobacco-related lung carcinogenesis is improving but the molecular mechanisms of neoplastic transformation in never-smokers have not yet been elucidated. Mountzios et al. describe the best characterized signaling pathways that are implicated in the transduction of proliferative signals, and discuss the differences in the molecular characteristics of smokers and never-smokers.
Testicular germ-cell cancer is the most common solid malignancy affecting males in puberty and adulthood. Ponti et al. report the case of a 45-year-old man who was initially misdiagnosed with stage I seminoma, developed brain metastases and finally died. Pathology review showed large B-cell lymphoma in the primary tumor. The authors underline the need for accurate histology review in testicular tumors with unusual clinical features.
