Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States of America and all over the world is one of threat for the men health.
As per the American Cancer Society website (2018) 1 man in 9 has the probability of getting diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
Websites also state that 1 out of 41 man dies due to prostate cancer every year.
As per The Surveillance,
Epidemiology,
and End Results (SEER) data (2018); about 164,690 new cases of prostate cancer diagnosed during 2018 which is 9.5% of the total cancer cases,
and there were 29,430 deaths happened due to the prostate cancer which is 4.8% of the total cancer death.
The prostate gland exists below the bladder and at the front of the rectum.
Prostate glands main function is to make the fluid for semen.
Urethra passes through the centre of the prostate which carries semen and urine through the penis.
Prostate glands size increases with the age and its quite common to find a big size prostate in old age males. However,
sometimes it converts in the cancerous (Prostate cancer foundation,2017).
Prognosis of prostate cancer is required a proper diagnosis and treatment for the same.
Most commonly DRE (Digital rectal examination) and Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is some of the standard diagnostic approaches for the patient (American cancer society,2018)
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is a common biomarker to getting an indication for prostate cancer.
It’s elevated value in the blood indicate prostate disease,
but it is not always lead to prostate cancer,
sometimes it may be due to other reasons like Urinary tract infection (UTI),
Excessive exercise,
Ejeculation within 2-3 days of blood test and due to certain medications.
So for proper management of prostate cancer we require a well define specific diagnosis method,
and after that,
a well defines treatment line (American cancer society,2018; Science blog,2018).
Nowadays much attention is being given to the development of precision medicine in oncology.
Earlier Radioisotope-labelled choline was used for diagnosis and determining the staging of prostate cancer.
However,
in current days’ lot of studies suggested that radioisotope labelled Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is an exciting agent for diagnosis as well as treatment of prostate cancer (Bouchelouche,
Choyke & Capala 2010).
Literature shows that PSMA is over expressive in the prostate cancer cell.
Studies suggested that this PSMA can be used as a target for both diagnostic imaging and therapy (Wright,
Haley,
Beckett & Schellhammer,2010).
PSMA is a type II integral membrane glycoprotein (Lütje,
Blex,
Gomez,
Schaarschmidt,
Umutlu,
Forsting & Wetter,2016).
Expression of PSMA noted higher in prostate cancer and aggression can be increased with tumour assertiveness,
metastatic disease and disease recurrence (Bouchelouche et al.,2010).
Other than prostate cells,
PSMA also found in some healthy tissues like salivary glands,
renal tubules mostly proximal,
ovary,
epididymis,
in the lumen of ileum-jejunum and astrocytes of Central nervous system.
It has also been noted that apart from healthy tissue and prostate cancer cell PSMA also expressed in few tumours,
i.e.
pancreas,
lung,
and renal cell carcinoma.
However,
still,
it is a good choice as its doesn't exist in the normal vasculature (Silver,
Pellicer,
Fair,
Heston,
& Cordon-Cardo,1997; Chang,
O'Keefe,
Bacich,
Reuter,
Heston,
W.
& Gaudin,1999).
PSA and PSMA are different from each other on various grounds i.e.
1. PSA is a protein which one is secreted by cells while PSMA is a cells Integral membrane protein.
2. PSA main function is to liquefied semen where PSMA function is related to various enzymatic activities.
3. PSA level decreases in serum with androgen deprivation while PSMA increases.