November 2007 CEBP Highlights

 

Statins have known anticarcinogenic effects; however, evidence for long-term statin use as effective chemoprevention for prostate cancer is inconsistent. Jacobs and colleagues examined the association between use of cholesterol-lowering drugs and prostate cancer incidence in the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. They found that current use of cholesterol-lowering drugs for five or more years was not associated with overall prostate cancer incidence, but was associated with a marginally statistically significant reduction in risk of advanced prostate cancer. Flick and colleagues examined the association between statin use and risk of prostate cancer in the California Men’s Health Study. Their findings also suggested that statin use for 5 years or longer may be associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer. However, the association appeared to be restricted to regular users of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Murtola and colleagues evaluated the association between serum cholesterol-lowering medication use and prostate cancer risk with subjects identified from the Finnish Cancer Registry and the Population Register Centre. These authors found no evidence for reduced overall prostate cancer risk among users of cholesterol-lowering drugs, but the risk of advanced cancer was decreased among statin users.

In the accompanying editorial, Platz provided epidemiologic arguments about whether statin drugs prevent prostate cancers that have a poorer prognosis, and pointed to the epidemiologic and translational work that remains to be conducted to establish whether statin drugs should be prescribed for the prevention or treatment of advance prostate cancer, irrespective of cardiovascular disease indication.

 

There are many models of rodent mammary tumorigenesis; however, their relationship to human breast cancer is unclear. The dog develops mammary cancer spontaneously and its cancer resembles human breast cancer in histopathological grade and biological behavior. Antuofermo and colleagues described both the histologic and immunohisotchemistry of canine intraepithelial lesions (IELs). They found that ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) was the most common IEL found in the 200 dogs studied; DCIS is also the most frequently diagnosed IEL in humans. The accompa­nying editorial by Cadieu and Ostrander underscores the importance of dogs as an animal model. Dogs share a common environment with people and, therefore, have similar exposure to carcinogens. Dogs experience many of the same precursor syndromes that herald metastatic disease in humans. A clearer understanding of canine cancer syndromes will almost certainly lead to a better understanding of the key steps in the formation of human tumors.

Family studies have served as a cornerstone of genetic research on colorectal cancer. The Colorectal Cancer Family Registry (C-CFR) is an international consortium of six centers in North America and Australia formed as a resource to support studies on the etiology, prevention, and clinical management of colorectal cancer. Newcomb and colleagues reported on the structure and nature of the C-CFR, noting differences and similarities in design and sampling schemes that ensure a resource that covers the continuum of disease risk. The C-CFR is in Year 10 with the second phase of enrollment nearly complete. The authors noted that the C-CFR can support a research program that is broad and interdisciplinary, including mutation identification, epigenetics, pathology, candidate-gene, epidemiology, and behavioral studies.