14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine (CGM) and the University of Tokyo, carried out a genome-wide study on Japanese prostate cancer patients. The study has revealed 5 new genetic variations associated with prostate cancer, and also gave resemblances and differences in the disease between Europeans and Asians.
Asian countries are known to have the lowest prostate cancer rates in the world. Still, these last years cases of the world's most frequent form of cancer started to multiply. In Japan, for example, because of the Western lifestyles and the aging society, prostate cancer rates rose alarmingly and this phenomenon triggered a higher public interest for understanding the disease and the associated genetic factors. Genome-wide association studies, or GWAS, involve scanning complete genomes for variations of a particular disease, thus they are the best way of understanding prostate cancer.
For their research, RIKEN scientists compared variations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in 4,584 Japanese men with prostate cancer, and 8,801 individuals part of the control group. Studies on European subjects, revealed 31 SNPs linked to prostate cancer susceptibility, but the researchers only found 19 for the Japanese population.
As for the other 12 SNPs, they showed no association, but five new genetic variations were identified as being linked to prostate cancer, without being previously identified in studies on European populations. This is the first time that genome-wide data on prostate cancer is being gathered in a non-European population. With every new research on the prostate carcinogenesis, scientists develop their understanding of its genetic basis, and this latest study shows that there is a ethnic criteria in susceptibility variations. Integrating all this will probably allow a more accurate risk evaluation, better detection techniques and a more effective medical treatment.
The RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine carries out research and experiments in fields like chemistry, physics, biology, medical science and engineering. It was first organized as a private research foundation, back in 1917 and in 2003 it was transformed in an independent administrative institution of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
The results of this RIKEN conducted study were published in Nature Genetics.