how is prostate cancer different from othertypes of cancer? what we know from the tumor biology that prostatecancer is an extremely slow growing tumor, that does not mean that patients will dieof prostate cancer, in fact 25,000 men every year in the united states die of prostatecancer. but these tumors are slow growing. our goal as physicians and neurologists isto identify those tumors that are much more aggressive. aggressive tumors tend to proliferateor grow rapidly and these are the cancers that actually kill people. up to this point,we have only had the gleason score of what the cells look like to try to determine thenatural history of prostate cancer. there is a lot of research that has been done recentlyand the genetic marker field is now becoming
sort of a new horizon where we are lookingat ways to predict aggressiveness in patients with prostate cancer. the oncotype dx testis just one way in which we can use genetic markers or profiles to try to determine theaggressiveness of these tumors. these tumors that have a high gps score or tend to be muchmore aggressive and these are the tumors that one would probably choose a definitive interventionsuch as surgery or radiation rather than active surveillance. some prostate cancers are high risk, aggressive,and more likely to spread. others are low risk, least likely to have bad outcomes. thebiopsy says cancer, but current diagnostic tools provide limited information about howaggressive a man's individual disease is,
so most men decide to treat prostate cancerimmediately. once treated, many men experience serious long-term side effects like incontinenceand sexual impotence. immediate treatment is not always needed, but right now a mancan't be sure if his cancer is the kind that is likely to require treatment or if he isokay to wait for now. what if there was a test that could determine how aggressive prostatecancer is. genomic health is developing a new test to do just that. by reviewing theunderlying biology of the tumor and using genes from multiple biologic pathways, thetest can predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer when diagnosed, allowing a man to makea more informed treatment decision with confidence, taking care of himself with more informationand greater peace of mind.