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janrinok writes:

Almost 90 per cent of men with advanced prostate cancer carry genetic mutations in their tumours that could be targeted by either existing or new cancer drugs, a landmark new study reveals.

Scientists in the UK and the US have created a comprehensive map of the genetic mutations within lethal prostate cancers that have spread around the body, in a paper being hailed as the disease's 'Rosetta Stone'. Researchers say that doctors could now start testing for these 'clinically actionable' mutations and give patients with advanced prostate cancer existing drugs or drug combinations targeted at these specific genomic aberrations in their cancers. The study was led in the UK by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, in collaboration with researchers from eight academic clinical trials centres around the world.

Uniquely, doctors at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and at hospitals in the US were able to collect large numbers of samples of metastatic cancers -- cancers that had spread from the original tumour to other parts of the body. Normally these samples are extremely hard to access, and this is the first study in the world to carry out in-depth analysis of metastatic prostate cancers that are resistant to standard treatments.

The research is published in the journal Cell, and is funded by Stand up to Cancer and the Prostate Cancer Foundation.