MOLECULAR AND CELLULAR BIOLOGY OF PROSTATE-CANCER

Prostate cancer is an enigmatic disease. Although prostatic-intraepith elial neoplasia appears as early as the third decade and as many as 80 % of 80 year old men have epithelial cells in their prostate that fit the morphological criteria for cancer, only about 10% of men will ever have the clinical disease and less than 3% will die from it. There ha ve been no significant proven interventions which have altered the nat ural history of the disease since hormone down regulation was introduc ed in the 1940s and new research has been poorly supported. There is h owever an urgent need to develop new criteria to distinguish those pat ients with localised disease who will benefit from intervention from t hose that do not require it or who will have occult extra prostatic me tastases. Similarly, there is an urgent need to develop new treatments for those in wham the disease is extra-prostatic and therefore incura ble by conventional treatments. This review covers the latest developm ents in epidemiology, cellular and molecular biology including new are as such as ion channels in the field of prostate cancer.