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Maitland. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2017;3:262-70 Journal of
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2017.23
Cancer Metastasis and Treatment

www.jcmtjournal.com
Topic: How does the prostate cancer microenvironment affect Open Access
the metastatic process and/or treatment outcome?

Getting closer to prostate cancer in patients -

what scientists should want from clinicians

Norman J. Maitland

Cancer Research Unit, Department of Biology, University of York, Heslington, North Yorkshire YO10 5DD, UK.
Correspondence to: Dr. Norman J. Maitland, Cancer Research Unit, Department of Biology, University of York, Heslington, North Yorkshire
YO10 5DD, UK. E-mail: n.j.maitland@york.ac.uk

How to cite this article: Maitland NJ. Getting closer to prostate cancer in patients - what scientists should want from clinicians. J Cancer Metastasis
Treat 2017;3:262-70.
ABSTRACT
Article history: For scientists pursuing drug development for prostate cancer, it is critical that an
Received: 19 May 2017 appropriate ex vivo or in vitro model system is available for study. Cancer research has
First Decision: 5 Jul 2017 generally consisted of: (1) finding the means to arrest fast growing cancer cells; or (2)
Revised: 13 Jul 2017 (as a compromise) to slow down the excessive rate of cell growth; or in the best case (3)
Accepted: 14 Aug 2017 to kill the cancer cells whilst sparing the surrounding normal tissues. As the knowledge
Published: 17 Oct 2017 of the biological nature of the cancer cell improves, it has become increasingly apparent
that such a simplistic attitude to cancer therapy development or indeed diagnosis is
Key words: rapidly outdated, and a closer liaison between the clinic and the laboratory studies is
Prostate cancer treatments, more important than ever as the author seeks to target specific gene expression pathways,
model systems, specific signaling pathways, cancer specific mutations and indeed the interactions
primary cultures, between cancer cells and their micro-environment, all of which provide a tremendous
pre-clinical studies potential for novel therapeutic development.

INTRODUCTION quickly (minimizing the amount of time required to
do the experiment); (2) cells which are easy to infect
Not all cells within a cancer are fast growing. Indeed or transfect; and (3) cells which express the gene or
a proportion of cells within every tumor are probably the signaling pathway of interest. In relatively few
quiescent and impervious to drugs targeting cell cases has any consideration been made of the stage
cycle activity [1,2] . To accommodate this cellular of disease that a particular cell line represents. The
heterogeneity we really require new tissue mimetic study of “prostate cancer” is actually the study of a
cancer models . For many scientists, the availability number of different diseases [4-8] , for example: (1) low
[3]
of “off the shelf” cancer cell lines is a facility which Gleason grade tumors which have a weak capacity
they use as a matter of expediency. The reasoning to invade; (2) high Gleason grade cancers which
which makes a basic laboratory scientist choose remain sensitive to the effect of male sex hormones
a cancer model are: (1) robust cells which grow but which are known to invade at least locally and

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