Cancer stem cells in prostate adenocarcinoma

Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and it is excelled only by lung cancer as the leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. Although there has been progress in the detection of early prostate cancer, there are few therapeutic strategies for patients with locally advanced and/or metastatic disease. In fact, most patients with advanced disease respond initially to androgen ablation therapy, however, with very high frequency, androgen-independent cancers emerge and subsequently widespread metastasis occurs. Therefore, actually it is necessary to find new therapeutic strategies for this cancer. The cancer stem cell hypothesis has been receiving considerable attention in various solid tumors and in prostate cancer. According to the stem cell hypothesis a majority of mutations occur in stem cells and heterogeneity results from the ability of mutant stem cells to differentiate, thus the study of prostate cancer stem cells could eventually offer new ways to treat the incurable forms of prostate cancer. Moreover, this improved knowledge will also be a step forward in learning how we might help to prevent the disease from developing in men in the first place. On the basis of the actually knowledge, we describe the "status of art" of stem cell in prostate cancer, focused our attention on markers and methods for identifying stem cells, genetic features of prostate cancer and the relation between stem cells, inflammation and cancer in prostatic tissue.