Monash University’s Precision Medicine research group has discovered multiple new genetic risk factors that make men susceptible to aggressive prostate cancer that will contribute to future prevention of the disease.
Reported in a series of articles published in the prestigious international journals European Urology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute and International Journal of Cancer, the combined research outcomes of these studies validate that genetic alterations in the BRCA2, PALB2 and ATM genes are associated with prostate cancer risk in men that have a strong family history and elevates their risk of an aggressive form of the disease.
The studies, involving decades of collaborative research conducted by the Precision Medicine group and the Cancer Epidemiology Division of Cancer Council Victoria, have used the latest genetic sequencing technologies to screen thousands of men with and without prostate cancer.
Led by Dr Tu Nguyen-Dumont, from the Monash School of Clinical Sciences based at Monash Health, the research group used gene panel sequencing to compare the genetic variants of 787 Australian men with aggressive prostate cancer and 769 men with non-aggressive prostate cancer.
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