Genetic testing is necessary for some advanced “refractory” prostate cancers.
First, let’s look at genes and genetic testing:
Gene
A functional segment of the DNA molecule, the basic unit of genetic information, is the most fundamental determinant of all living species.
Broadly speaking, genes determine how people live, age, and die. Health, height, weight, skin color, looks, personality, and lifespan are all inextricably linked to genes, which are the manipulators and regulators of life, and the forms of existence and decay of all life are determined by genes.
Genetic testing
The technology of DNA testing through blood, body fluids, and cellular tissues is an important tool currently used for disease treatment, especially tumor treatment.
There are more than thirty types of tumors that can be detected by genetic testing. The common ones are lung cancer, gastric cancer, lymphocytic leukemia, breast cancer, rectal cancer, etc., and for the urinary system, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, prostate cancer, etc.
As tumor research moves to the genetic-molecular level, more and more tumor cell signaling pathways are being discovered, and numerous clinical studies have shown that the expression status of specific genes in the pathways is closely related to the efficacy of targeted, chemotherapeutic drugs.
Therefore, clinical testing of the expression of these tumor-specific genes has the potential to accurately select reasonable and effective therapeutic agents for patients, thereby improving the efficiency of treatment and reducing the toxic side effects of the drugs.
Genetic testing in prostate cancer
Gene testing is a technology that has been widely used in lung, breast, and kidney cancers, and in prostate cancer, the expression of some genes is closely related to androgen resistance, the selection and timing of chemotherapy drugs, and the selection of new anti-androgen drugs, and many hospitals have conducted these studies one after another.
For example, patients with mutations in the BRCA1/2 gene may be effective for olaparib treatment; patients with metastatic desmoplastic-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) with high microsatellite instability (MSI-H) or defective mismatch repair (dMMR) may be treated with pembrolizumab; and detection of AR- V7 expression predicts resistance to abiraterone/enzalutamide in prostate cancer patients.
So, in prostate cancer, especially in some advanced “refractory” prostate cancers, genetic testing is an important guide to treatment.