Aberrant Gene Expression Prostate Carcinoma

The goal of the study is to gain a better understanding of the molecular changes responsible for causing prostate cancer and that examination of tissue and blood samples will help in the development of improved screening and therapeutic approaches.

The goal of this study is to identify novel genetic elements that are aberantly expressed throughout prostatic neoplastic progression. The approaches proposed exploit the known familial arm of prostatic cancer, using established molecular genetic approaches, and extend these studies to sporadic prostatic cancer using a novel technique of differential display. Application of the latter technique to colon cancer in the American population establishes this tumor type as a high priority for scientific investigation and this study is part of an initiative to address this problem. Presently the studies in the field of prostate are under-represented. The collection of tissue samples from patients diagnosed with prostate cancer. Patients will also provide a blood sample at the time of their surgery and potentially post-op from 6 mos to 5 years. Samples will also be obtained from patients who's biopsy turns out to be non-prostate cancer. These samples will be obtained shortly following the biopsy out to 6 months after the biopsy.