| PROSTATE CANCER STEM CELLS
Charlotte Foley, Professor John R W Masters, Professor David Hudson, and Professor Roger Kirby Prostate Cancer Research Centre, Institute of Urology, RF&UCLMS |
Background
Prostate cancer develops in approximately one in ten men over 50 and kills more than 10,000 men in the UK each year. The aim of our research is to improve the understanding, management and treatment of prostate cancer.
Prostate Stem Cells
Within the prostate there is a small population of cells, the stem cells, which form all the other cells within the prostate. These cells are essential for the normal development of the prostate and we also believe that they are the cells in which prostate cancer develops.
Progress
We were the first scientists to isolate normal stem cells from the prostate. We can take a biopsy from a man's prostate, produce a single cell suspension, and determine the potential of each of these single cells to grow and form colonies. A small proportion of the colonies (about one in 200) are very large and able to regenerate prostate tissue, and these we have evidence that these are stem cell colonies. This approach provides us with a method to isolate stem cells.
In parallel, we are growing stem cells from prostate cancers. The aim is to grow both normal prostate stem cells and cancer stem cells from the same men. We can then use these cultures to identify differences between the normal and cancer stem cells. These differences may provide more reliable diagnostic markers or new targets for therapy.
Our research aims to identify prostate stem cell markers and the difference between the normal and the cancer stem cells. The work is important because it is only by eradicating the stem cells that we can hope to cure prostate cancer.
Research interim report dated 01 December 2003
Project 2001/07