Grant: Project Grant

Testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) are the most frequent solid tumors in adolescent and young men. Most patients with TGCT are diagnosed at a very early stage (Clinical Stage I - CSI) and are followed with active surveillance to detect the eventual tumor relapse early enough to be treated with curative intent. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery can cure most of the relapsed TGCT patients. However, these treatments come with a high cost for the survivors because of side effects in the short and long term. The current methods to detect TGCT rely on CT scan and blood work for tumor markers which are not specific for TGCT. This means that there are patients who are treated with chemo, radiation or surgery without having clear evidence of TGCT. Our group has demonstrated that certain micro-RNAs, and specifically miR371a-3p (miR371), produced specifically by TGCT, can be detected in the blood of TGCT patients and is more accurate than CT scan and serum tumor markers in detecting TGCT in patients with obvious advanced TGCT. However, no data are available about its utility in CSI patients during the surveillance, when the tumor volume is low. We have therefore proposed to analyze the miR371 expression in the blood of the relapser CSI TGCT patients collected at the time of the confirmed relapse and prior to the relapse, immediately after the orchiectomy, to assess if miR371 expression is better than the CT scan and serum tumor markers when there is a low volume of disease and can be used to predict tumor relapse. Moreover, two methodologies (real time polymerase chain reaction -RT-PCR and Nucleic Acid Sequence-Based Amplification -NASBA) will be compared and the one with higher power in patients with low volume TGCT will be selected for future studies.