"The Chinnaiyan group with its leadership and team of young scientists have just discovered that some prostate cancer patients have a melanoma-type genetic engine on the inside, propelling a prostate cancer cell chassis on the outside, and the melanoma RAF engine-fusion propels that cell down the road towards metastasis at highest speed," said Dr. Jonathan Simons, CEO and President of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. "You do not see connections between cancers in dermatology and urology under the microscope which was invented four centuries ago - but you do 'see it' with the seminal invention of new chromosome fusion biotechnology from Michigan. The finding is also seminal because it is actionable with new targeted anti-RAF medicines - just as the Her2 diagnosis made herceptin actionable for treatment in breast cancer," added Simons.

The new RAF gene fusions do not occur in cancers with the previously discovered gene fusions, and the new fusions appear to be linked to more aggressive cancers.

In addition, the researchers found rare incidences of these BRAF and RAF1 rearrangements in gastric cancer and melanoma, suggesting the same approach could be taken with multiple cancer types to fully identify every cancer patient's tumor susceptibility to anti-RAF drugs.

"Rather than treating cancer as just an entity classified under the microscope as a 'prostate tumor' or a 'gastric tumor,' it needs to be thought of as a 'RAF mutant tumor.' We need to think about what the driving molecular basis for each tumor is and what oncologists can then do about that for the patients," says Chinnaiyan, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and an American Cancer Society Research Professor.

The researchers tested two drugs - one already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a RAF kinase inhibitor - in cells lines expressing the RAF fusions and found that the cells were exceptionally sensitive to these drugs.

Prostate cancer statistics: 192,280 Americans will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year and 27,360 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. Researchers estimate 3,600 of these diagnoses may be RAF-driven.

SOURCE Prostate Cancer Foundation