Prostate-specific antigen and history of its discovery

In contradistinction to prostatic acid phosphatase (PAcP), prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is currently the most reliable and most frequently used marker for identification of normal and pathologically altered prostatic tissues both in the male and female. In clinical practice, it has become an appreciated serum marker in the assessment and management of prostate carcinoma in the male, although it is far from being a perfect "tumor" marker. Our knowledge on female PSA is expected to be broadened by the introduction of novel highly sensitive serological methods (IMMULITE--immunochemiluminiscent third-generation PSA assay and others), which in some females have already demonstrated surprisingly high values. Biochemically, PSA in seminal fluid in its free form has a molecular weight of about 30,000 daltons, while in serum, where it occurs in the complex form with alpha1-chymotrypsin, its molecular weight is approximately 100,000 daltons being comparable to that of PAcP. On immunohistochemical examination, PSA is expressed in the highly specialized apically-superficial layer of male and female secretory (luminal) cells of the prostatic glands, as well as at other sites of the urogenital tract, frequently coinciding with glucosamine glucans, glycoproteins and numerous enzyme proteins. With regard to the increasing interest in PSA evidenced in urology, gynecological urology, in the orthology and pathology of male and female prostates, the interest in the history of discovery of this exceptional prostatic marker appears to be justified. PSA was discovered by Richard Ablin and co-workers in the USA, who published their pioneer work in the Journal of Reproduction and Fertility and in the Journal of Immunology as early as in 1970. Thus their results had been available nine years before the publication of Wang et al. appeared in Investigative Urology (1979), on the basis of which the latter are frequently incorrectly considered and cited as the authors of PSA discovery. (Ref. 46.)