Prostate tissue banking

As the most common non-dermatologic malignancy affecting males in the Western world, and the second leading cause of male cancer-related deaths, the importance of prostate cancer research needs little justification [1]. Epidemiologic reports have described the significant heritability of such malignancies, with one twin-study attributing 42 % (CI 29-50 %) of prostate cancer cases to heritable factors [2]. Genome-wide linkage analyses of germline single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) continue to uncover many low-risk genetic associations with prostate cancer [3]. These findings are being supplemented with expression arrays in an effort to identify individual somatic mutations such as TMPRSS2-ERG gene fusions [4] as well as more global gene expression profiles.