Cancer is a multi-factorial disease. Prostate cancer is the most commonly seen urological malignancy. Causes of prostate cancer are related to genetics, aging, mutation or environmental factors. Because high mortality rate, cancer screening of the Taiwan population is therefore very important. The survey of tumor markers provides studies of carcinogenesis, observation of therapy effects and prognosis. We aim to use tool of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to study insulin-like growth factor-II (IGF-II), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), and gultathionine-S-transferase M1 genes to calculate the association between patients with prostate cancer and normal controls. Cancer formation is related to activation of carcinogens. Mechanisms of inactivation or activation of most environmental carcinogens are by the complex enzymatic system in body. Functions of such enzymes are therefore important for cancer formation. Glutathione-S transferase is a well-known intracellular metabolism and detoxification of cytotoxic and carcinogenic products. Previous studies have shown absence of GST M to have a risk of susceptible to gastric cancer formation in our laboratory. Therefore, this gene is one of our focuses. The proliferation and apoptosis of cells are controlled by various growth factors. IGF-2 is a mitogen performs an important role in regulating the processes of proliferation and apoptosis in prostate cancer cells. IGF-2 is considered to be involved in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer based on the study of its occurrence in plasma and tissue expression in prostate cancer patients. IGF-2 is therefore chose. EGFR is a tyrosine kinase receptor and plays an important role in the control of cell growth and differentiation and overexpression of EGFR has been associated with various malignancies. Increased proliferation and growth stimulation within tumor cells may be responsible for the malignant transformation. It is chose for the study of association with prostate cancer. However, few studies have demonstrated the association between GST M1, IGF-2 and EGFR and prostate cancer. We aimed to study this association with prostate cancer progression and clinical outcomes by focusing on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
