The use of radiogenomic precision medicine has the potential to become the foundation for the personalized management of prostate cancer (PCa), according to a study published in the Polish Journal of Radiology.
The need to guide personalized, precision treatment tactics based on personal clinical risk factors has evolved in the era of human genome sequencing, the researchers note. However, unlike other malignancies, such as breast cancer or glioblastoma, personalized modalities for PCa patients have yet to be developed. Enter radiogenomics, a relatively new term, which refers to the study of genetic variation associated with imaging features of tumors. Recent data have demonstrated that by combining individual tumor features with genomic/transcriptomic and radiomic profiling with traditional staging modalities can enhance prognostic capabilities, and overtreatment of indolent PCa can be averted.
Several studies were cited which demonstrate the efficacy of combining genomics and radiogenomics in PCa. In one such analysis, performed by Fischer et al., researchers made efforts to decode the underlying PCa progression molecular mechanisms by means of a radiogenomic approach. This study assessed of MRI data as well as gene/miRNA expression profiles for T2c and T3b PCa stages. The results showed revealed that biomarkers such as ANPEP, miR-217, miR-592, and miR-6715b may cause upstaging, while enabling PCa stages to be distinguished. The researchers were all able to correlate with corresponding aggressiveness-related radiomic MR-features with clinical significance.
In conclusion, the researchers wrote, “being an attractive research topic, the radiogenomics of PCa currently is not a comprehensively investigated area of oncourology. According to preliminary research findings conducted in this field, the combination of genomics and radiomics (and presumably metabolomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics) as integrative parts of precision medicine in the future has the potential to become the foundation for a personalized approach to the management of PCa.”
