Research team at The Institute identifies gene expression signature to help guide treatment decisions for prostate cancer patients
SOURCE: The Institute
September 11, 2025
A team led by Simone Chevalier, PhD and Armen Aprikian, MD at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (The Institute) has developed a promising approach—recently published in the journal Molecular Oncology—that offers a new way to determine how aggressively prostate cancer may behave. By analyzing specific genes in blood RNA, the team has identified distinct expression patterns that could help clinicians predict which patients are at higher risk of progression.
"This work represents a major step toward less invasive, more precise tools for identifying aggressive prostate cancer," said Prof. Chevalier, a senior scientist in the Cancer Research Program at The Institute. "The ultimate goal is to offer more personalized treatments and target high-risk disease earlier."
From blood liquid biopsies to biology: a new approach for personalized care
Prostate cancer varies widely in how it behaves. Some men live with it for decades without symptoms, while others develop rapidly spreading disease despite treatment. Currently, clinicians rely on PSA levels, biopsies, and imaging to assess risk and to track treatments, but these tools do not always capture the full complexity of the disease.
In this study, the research team developed a panel of 57 genes representing prostate cancer cell subtypes, potential alternate drug targets, or genes relevant to treatment resistance mechanisms. In the blood of men with localized prostate cancer, expression of these genes was related to aggressive clinical features—for example, indicators seen at diagnosis or surgery that are linked with a higher risk of progression. In men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), subtype and resistance signatures were associated with response to treatments and patient outcomes.
"Capturing the biology of a tumour through the RNA of just a few cancer cells and extracellular vesicles in the bloodstream is challenging but also incredibly powerful," said Seta Derderian, the paper's first author, and a doctoral candidate with Prof. Chevalier at the time of this work. "We hope this information, or "signature", can eventually be used alongside the few existing tools to guide clinical decisions in predicting recurrence and progression. Doctors could then offer alternative drugs tailored to a patient's molecular signature—either medicines already used in other cancers or therapies now in clinical trials for advanced prostate cancer."
Next steps
The team plans to validate the circulating gene signature at each phase of patients' trajectories to determine more precisely when each gene is overexpressed. They aim to develop assays for implementation in clinical practice which will complement PSA testing and allow earlier intervention in progression.
Their work adds to a growing movement in oncology, that of tailoring cancer treatments to the individual biology of each patient.
About the study
Clinical significance of stratifying prostate cancer patients through specific circulating genes was written by Seta Derderian, Edouard Jarry, Arynne Santos, Quentin Vesval, Lucie Hamel, Rafael Sanchez-Salas, Alexis Rompré-Brodeur, Wassim Kassouf, Raghu Rajan, Fadi Brimo, Marie Duclos, Armen Aprikian and Simone Chevalier, published in Molecular Oncology.
Mol Oncol. 2025 May;19(5):1310-1331, DOI: 10.1002/1878-0261.13805
The authors thank the patients and volunteers who generously accepted to donate blood for this study. Initial funding for the project came from Prostate Cancer Canada and Movember. The pilot study was supported by funds dedicated to prostate cancer research at the Cedars Cancer Foundation.
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