Modern urology perspectives on prostate cancer biomarkers

INTRODUCTION: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common type of cancer among men in Europe. Current recommendations for screening and diagnosis are based on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) measurements and the digital rectal examination (DRE). Both of them are triggers for prostate biopsy. Limited specificity of the PSA test brings, however, a need to develop new, better diagnostic tools. Several commercially available variations of the PSA test including: prostate health index (PHI), 4Kscore as well as molecular PCA3 score, have already revealed its value, lowering the number of unnecessary biopsies. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This review summarizes published results of the current most promising, clinically proven and experimentally evaluated PCa biomarkers which have potential for creation of new diagnostic tests. RESULTS: In the last few years new approaches for providing significantly better biomarkers, an alternative to PSA, have been introduced. Modern biomarkers show improvement in being used as not only a diagnosis procedure, but also for staging, evaluating aggressiveness and managing the therapeutic process. The most promising group are molecular markers, among them microRNAs(miRNAs) and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are most frequent. Their superiority, over standard PSA, in predicting tumor formation in early stages, and clinically non-symptomatic metastases has been noticed. Extracellular vesicles presence in biofluids have brought focus of many research groups, indicating their potential significance. This group of nanoparticles has potential not only in diagnostic and therapy management process, but also as a potential therapeutic target. CONCLUSIONS: Finding better PCa biomarkers, replacing the current PSA measurement, is firmly needed in modern urology practice.