Gene expression alterations in human prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is a disease with a great degree of variation in biological aggressiveness and clinical prognosis. Although more than 30% of the older-aged male population develops prostate cancer, defined by histologic examination, a large number of these cases does not reach the stage displaying clinical symptoms. Among those patients with clinical prostate cancer, only a fraction of cases demonstrate life-threatening biological aggressiveness. Parallel to the clinical complexity of this disease, abnormalities in the prostate cancer genome have been reported in 21 of 23 pairs of human chromosomes, but none can be accountable for the dominant event in the development of prostate cancer. In order to understand the genetic nature of this disease, a comprehensive analysis of its gene expression patterns is needed. This article will review several recent publications in the area of gene expression analysis using microarray technology. I will discuss some of our findings in the area of gene expression alteration in benign prostate tissue adjacent to prostate cancer. The implication of these studies in potential clinical application will be explored.