Sarcosine Levels Indicate Aggressive Prostate Cancer

A chemical fingerprint called sarcosine can be found in high levels in the urine of men with aggressive cancer of the prostate, providing a potential biomarker of the disease.

One of the most difficult challenges today with regard to prostate cancer is how to determine whether the cancer is aggressive. Physicians tend to over-treat patients with slow-growing cancers.

Investigators examined 1,126 molecules produced by the body in a total of 262 samples of tissue, blood, or urine. They located about 10 molecules (metabolites) that were more often present in samples taken from patients with advanced forms of prostate cancer. One metabolite, sarcosine, was often found at elevated levels in urine samples taken from patients with advanced cancer, or cancer that had spread, but not at all in samples taken from healthy tissue.

By adding sarcosine to cultures, scientists turned benign prostate cells into malignant ones, suggesting that the molecule could play an important role in the development of invasive tumors.

The study was preformed by Arul Chinnaiyan of the University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) and colleagues. The findings were reported in the February 11, 2009 journal Nature. The authors stress that their results have to be confirmed and calibrated independently before a urine test is for sarcosine can be accepted as a diagnostic tool. The discovery of sarcosine could also open up new pathways for attacking the disease.

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University of Michigan Medical School