New assay for staging and prognostic information in prostate cancer

Imaging diagnosis is not sufficiently accurate for local staging and determining lymph node status of clinically localized prostate cancer. The most accurate predictive method for local pathological stage of localized prostate cancer is a combination of analysis of prostate-specific antigen mRNA by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and serum prostate-specific antigen level. Expression of Ki-67 in prostate cancer is useful to predict survival in patients with stages B, C, and D1. Comparative genomic hybridization identified several novel regions of frequent deletion or gain of DNA copy numbers in prostate cancer.