Blood and serum substances for markers of prostate cancer

Serummarkers for prostate carcinoma are widely applied for the purpose of e arly detection of cancer and the differentiation between benign and maligna nt disease, for the pretreatment staging of detected prostatic cancers, and for the monitoring of prostate cancer after curative or palliative therapi es. This review illustrates the limitations of current markers for prostati c disease in blood en serum. It gives an overview of what is known about PS A and its isoforms, hK2, PSMA, and PSCA, and discusses, based on this infor mation, in what direction current research is developing in order to improv e these markers, (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.