Prostate cancer has genetic 'accelerator'

A key genetic "accelerator" of prostate cancer has been discovered, opening the door to potential new treatments.

The Bmi-1 gene, already linked to other cancers, appears to spur on the growth of aggressive tumours.

Animal tests showed that blocking it slowed down the self-renewal of a particularly dangerous form of prostate cancer.

Loss of Bmi-1 activity also helped to prevent normal cells becoming cancerous.

The US research is reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Dr Owen Witte, director of the Broad Stem Cell Research Centre at the University of California, Los Angeles, said: "We conclude by these results that Bmi-1 is a crucial regulator of self-renewal in adult prostate cells and plays important roles in prostate cancer initiation and progression.

"It was encouraging to see that inhibiting this protein slows the growth of even a very aggressive prostate cancer, because that could give us new ways to attack this disease."

A key finding was that blocking Bmi-1 held back cancer growth driven by different biological pathways.

This suggests that targeting the gene might be effective in a wide range of patients.

Rita Lukacs, a member of Dr Witte's team, said: "Prostate cancer can be initiated by so many different mutations, if we can find a key regulator of self-renewal, we can partially control the growth of the cancer no matter what the mutation is.

"We're attacking the process that allows the cancer cells to grow indefinitely. This provides us an alternate way of attacking the cancer by going to the core mechanism for cancer cell self-renewal and proliferation."

Each year around 36,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and 10,000 die from the disease.