Overview

Prostate cancer is cancer that occurs in the prostate. The prostate is a small walnut-shaped gland in males that produces the seminal fluid that nourishes and transports sperm.

Prostate cancer is one of the most common types of cancer. Many prostate cancers grow slowly and are confined to the prostate gland, where they may not cause serious harm. However, while some types of prostate cancer grow slowly and may need minimal or even no treatment, other types are aggressive and can spread quickly.

Signs and symptoms

Prostate cancer may cause no signs or symptoms in its early stages.

Prostate cancer that’s more advanced may cause signs and symptoms such as:

• Trouble urinating.
• Decreased force in the stream of urine.
• Blood in the urine.
• Blood in the semen.
• Bone pain.
• Losing weight without trying.
• Erectile dysfunction.

Pancreatic cancer and mitochondria

Mitochondrial alterations in cancer and their relevance as a biomarker have been re-explored in recent years. Mitochondrial DNA is potentially a better biomarker as its genome is well characterized, and its high copy number allows its alteration to be assessed easily from even a limited amount of samples. Mitochondria, the ‘powerhouse’ of the cell, play a crucial role in cellular metabolism and energy production via oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). Mitochondria also communicate with the nucleus to convey the information needed to adapt to the metabolic demands of the cell, as well as with the cell’s surroundings leading to stromal remodeling. Here we review the mitochondrial alterations reported in PCa and discuss their roles in pathobiology and racial disparities. We also discuss potential strategies to target dysfunctional mitochondria, as well as their utility as prognostic biomarkers.

Mitochondrial mutations also show associations with risk of biochemical relapse. Interestingly, mtSNVs within the control region can have conflicting outcomes; however, when separated into the different noncoding subregions (HV1, OHR), we found that certain loci were associated with better outcomes and others with worse outcomes. The overlap of the OHR and HV2 within the control region and their association with MYC CNAs highlight the need for better understanding of the functions of the control region. In future, treating the control region as distinct regulatory regions may provide further insight into the roles of these regions, as well as any contribution they may make toward tumor aggression. We note that the number of pairs of nuclear-mitochondrial mutational features tested may elevate false-positive rates, and it will be key to perform validation studies in larger cohorts to verify their effect-sizes and biological significance.