Target populations, pathological biomarkers and chemopreventive agents in prostate cancer prevention

Chemoprevention is the administration of agents to prevent induction of cancer, or to inhibit or delay its progression. In prostatic neoplasia, the time from tumour initiation and progression to invasive carcinoma often begins in men in the fourth and fifth decades of life and extends across decades. This phenomenon represents a unique opportunity to arrest or reverse the process of carcinogenesis with the use of chemopreventive agents. For prostate cancer, as for other cancer targets, development of successful chemopreventive strategies requires suitable cohorts, reliable biomarkers for evaluating chemopreventive efficacy and well-characterised agents. Histopathologists play an important role in prostate chemoprevention. In fact, they define the high-risk groups, recognise the surrogate end markers and evaluate the morphological effects of the agents on the prostate tissue specimens.