Detection and Investigation of Extracellular Vesicles in Serum and Urine Supernatant of Prostate Cancer Patients.

Prostate Cancer (PCa) is one of the most frequently identified urological cancers. PCa patients are often over-diagnosed due to still not highly specific diagnostic methods. The need for more accurate diagnostic tools to prevent overestimated diagnosis and unnecessary treatment of patients with non-malignant conditions is clear, and new markers and methods are strongly desirable.

Telomerase Activity Analysis In Urine Sediment for Bladder Cancer.

Bladder cancer with an incidence of 15 cases per 100,000 persons in the global population is the most common tumor of the urinary tract. Imaging techniques, cytoscopy, and cytology are not sufficiently accurate to detect early stage tumors, and the need for new diagnostic markers is still an urgency. Among the biomarkers most recently proposed to improve diagnostic accuracy and especially sensitivity, increasing attention has been focused on the role of the ribonucleoprotein, telomerase.

Analysis of Copy Number Variation in Urine: c-Myc Evaluation Using a Real-Time PCR Approach.

Urine cell-free DNA has been shown as an informative noninvasive source of biomarkers for a number of diseases, especially for urological cancers. Starting from the hypothesis that the gain of c-Myc gene is a frequent aberration in several cancer types, including prostate cancer, we analyzed c-Myc copy number variation in urine, studying a little case series of prostate cancer patients, to test its feasibility. Here we report a general protocol that may be considered to analyze gene copy number variation in the urine cell-free fraction.

Urinary Cell-Free DNA Integrity Analysis.

Urine cell-free DNA is an important source of diagnostic markers for different diseases, especially for cancer. It could be important to achieve the urine cell-free DNA integrity to establish its provenience from cancer cells or dead inflammatory cells for necrosis in urine or from normal cells with the purpose to use it as an early diagnostic tool for urological cancers or other diseases. Here we describe a simple, noninvasive approach from urine collection to DNA integrity analysis using real-time PCR.

Plasma Androgen Receptor and Docetaxel for Metastatic Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer.

Plasma androgen receptor (AR) gain identifies metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) patients with worse outcome on abiraterone/enzalutamide, but its relevance in the context of taxane chemotherapy is unknown. We aimed to evaluate whether docetaxel is active regardless of plasma AR and to perform an exploratory analysis to compare docetaxel with abiraterone/enzalutamide. This multi-institutional study was a pooled analysis of AR status, determined by droplet digital polymerase chain reaction, on pretreatment plasma samples.