The aim of the stem cell research group at the Prostate Cancer Research Centre is to provide a new therapy for prostate cancer.
The adult prostate is made up of various specialized cells that perform specific functions within the organ. However, specialized cells (also called differentiated cells) have a limited life-span and as they are lost, new cells are required to replenish and sustain the organ. In adult tissue, stem cells generate specialized cells that replace the cells lost due to normal wear and tear, injury or disease.  Adult stem cells are rare, unspecialized cells that can divide and renew (a process called self-renewal) for a long period. Under certain conditions they can be induced to become specialized. Cancer is thought to be disease of the stem cells and until cancer stem cells are eliminated it can relapse. 
Unfortunately, very little is known about stem cells from either normal prostate or prostate cancer. The immediate task is therefore to separate the normal prostate stem cells from the specialized cells. To do this from adult human prostate tissue we have developed a technique called the sphere formation assay. Briefly, the prostate tissue is digested with enzymes to obtain single cells (millions of cells are obtained).  When grown using very specific conditions, individual stem cells form spheres. This assay allows preliminary identification of prostate stem cells. We have expanded these studies to find out how normal stem cells and specialized cells differ by determining the genes and proteins that these two sets of cells express. We will also obtain prostate cancer to grow stem cells and compare the differences between normal and cancer stem cells. This will be a first important step in identifying how prostate cancer may develop, so we can diagnose it early, and whether differently expressed genes and proteins could be used as therapeutic targets for the treatment of prostate cancer.