Every year, tens of thousands of men in Germany are diagnosed with prostate cancer. According to data from the Robert Koch Institute, there were around 80,000 cases in 2023. If the disease is detected early, the chances of recovery are good. However, at an advanced stage, prostate cancer is difficult to treat. A major problem is that doctors often do not know exactly how aggressive a tumor really is. Researchers in Dresden have now found a possible new indicator in the blood.
A team led by Prof. Anna Dubrovska and Dr. Ielizaveta Gorodetska from OncoRay – National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology has identified a protein that can be detected in the blood and may be associated with particularly aggressive disease progression. OncoRay is jointly funded by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden and the Faculty of Medicine at TU Dresden.
Little blood, big effect
It is particularly promising that MMP11 could potentially be detected through a simple blood test. This approach is known as a “liquid biopsy” – an examination of blood instead of tissue samples. For patients, this is far less invasive than a surgical procedure. “Our data show that MMP11 is not only a biologically relevant driver of tumor aggressiveness, but could also be a clinically useful marker,” explains Dubrovska. In the long term, the researcher says, such a blood test could help doctors tailor treatments more precisely to individual patients and avoid over- or undertreatment.
However, it will still take several years before the test can be used in clinical practice. First, MMP11 must be further studied in larger and independent patient groups. The German Research Foundation is funding a research project led by Gorodetska in collaboration with the Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology in Poland.
