Karin Drotschmann, Ph.D., a researcher at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, has won the “New Investigator Award” from the Department of Defense, Prostate Cancer Research Program, for her work to develop a test for identifying which cases of prostate cancer will become life threatening.
About 25 percent to 30 percent of prostate tumors reach an advanced, aggressive and life-threatening stage. Other prostate tumors are more slow-growing and may not require immediate treatment.
“Physicians don’t want to treat everyone with prostate cancer the same way,” says Drotschmann, an assistant professor of cancer biology. “But, the severity of prostate cancers differs considerably between patients, and there is currently no way to reliably predict which tumors will become life-threatening.”
Drotschmann’s goal is to identify markers that will allow doctors to predict disease progression.
The development of cancer is associated with alterations, or mutations in DNA, which carries genetic information and is found in the chromosomes of cells. Normal cells recognize and repair these mutations before they become permanent. Scientists believe that defects in repair mechanisms may result in the accumulation of mutations, which is the foundation for cancer development.
Drotschmann’s work focuses on a group of proteins – called mismatch repair proteins – that are part of one of the major repair mechanisms in every cell. Defects in mismatch repair proteins are linked to several types of cancer. Research has shown that mismatch repair proteins are also involved in cell death – killing cells that they are unable to repair. But, cancer cells are defective in this process and are incapable of dying on their own.