Which are the 4 most common cancers in men? Know their causes and symptoms

Cancer is a debilitating disease that starts in any organ or tissue of the body that grows abnormally and uncontrollably beyond their usual boundaries and spread to other organs. That said, cancer is perhaps the second leading cause of death globally, accounting for an estimated 9.6 million deaths or more every year. While breast, colorectal, lung, cervical, and thyroid cancer are the most common types of cancer in women; lung, prostate, colorectal, stomach, and liver cancer are the most common types in men. World Cancer Day is observed on the 4th of February, every year.

Here is detailed information on the most common cancers affecting men.

4 most common cancers that affect men

Prostate cancer

The prevalence of prostate cancer has been on a surge lately. This cancer develops in the tissues of the prostate gland and may eventually interfere with the urinary system and its functions. While prostate cancer might not show any symptoms up unto the advanced stage, some of the common symptoms are bone pain, blood in urine, and feeling of strain when passing urine. That said, prostate cancer can be prevented with a combination of a healthy lifestyle and not smoking.

Lung cancer

Although smoking is the primary risk factor of lung cancer, however, it can affect anybody regardless of smoking habits. Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer of all and is most likely to be triggered by environmental pollution, chewing tobacco, and exposure to dangerous carcinogenic compounds. The common symptoms of lung cancer include coughing, shortness of breath, chest pain, hoarseness, noisy breathing, change in sputum, and coughing up blood.

Colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer is the cancer of the colon or rectum that primarily affects men /women of older age group. Obesity, smoking, and inflammatory bowel disease can increase the risk of this cancer in individuals. Other factors like a family history of colorectal cancer, physical inactivity, age, low intake of fibre-rich food, and excessive intake of processed and red meats are likely to increase the risk of this cancer. Symptoms like belly pain, rectal bleeding, change in bowel habits, and weight loss may be noticeable. It is advisable for men aged 50 and above to repeatedly get screened for colorectal every 5 to 10 years and ensure early detection and proper treatment. 

Liver cancer

It's important to distinguish liver cancer from metastases to the liver, as liver cancer refers to cancer that has spread to the liver from other regions of the body. The symptoms of liver cancer include jaundice, loss of appetite, and abdominal pain. Preventive measures like limiting alcohol intake, exercising regularly, eating healthy, weight management, and protecting yourself from getting infected with hepatitis B and C viruses will reduce the risk of liver cancer. 

While these four types of cancers are commonly found in men, adopting preventive measures and consulting your medical professional is essential for timely medical intervention.

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Scientists pinpoint protein that plays key role in lung cancer and melanoma progression

Scientists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU, Russia), University of Geneva (Switzerland), Minjiang University, and Fuzhou University (China) pointed out WDR74 protein playing an important role in lung cancer and melanoma primary tumors/metastases progression. During the research, the artificially gained WDR74 function brought about a high activity in cancer cells. 

However, when the function had been dropped cells failed to metastasize becoming more vulnerable to chemotherapy. Related articles are published in Cancer Letters and Oncogene.

Except for brain cancer and some forms of blood cancer, not the main tumor but its metastases kill the patient taking over vital organs.

Metastases form at a certain stage of the primary tumor progression when its cells start separating and entering the bloodstream. Such cells are called circulating tumor cells, and they give rise to metastases which are secondary tumors appearing in different parts of the human body.

Fortunately, just subtle minority, tenths or even hundredths of a percent, of circulating tumor cells is capable of metastasizing. A few years ago, Chinese scientists from the laboratory of Dr. Lee Jia (Fuzhou University) wondered what discriminates "successful" circulating tumor cells from "unsuccessful" ones. Searching for a possible answer, they analyzed tumor cells (proteomic analysis) and spotted proteins highly expressed in active metastatic cells and lost in passive ones. One of these proteins was WDR74; its expression level in "successful" circulating tumor cells was two times higher than in the initial tumor. Scientists set up hypotheses stated this protein is a trigger helping a circulating tumor cell turn into a secondary tumor.

Within this discovery, two of our scientific publications were being built, one devoted to lung cancer, and the other to melanoma. To test the oncogenic activity of WDR74 in circulating tumor cells of lung cancer and melanoma, we "turned off" this protein by the method of gene correction CRISPR / Cas9 and interfering RNAs to remove/reduce the amount of protein. After that, we monitored what happens to the cells in the context of their proliferation, colony formation, cell cycle, ability to migrate and grasp in body tissues. We have also conducted the opposite experiment increasing the amount of WDR74 protein in cancer cells. Both types of experiment confirmed that WDR74 plays a crucial role in the progression of the tumor and its metastases. Protein absence decreases, and the presence increases the oncogenic properties of circulating tumor cells. In vivo this confirmed during the experiments conducted on mice."

Prof. Vladimir Katanaev, one of the research authors, Head of the Laboratory of Pharmacology of Natural Compounds, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy of the FEFU School of Biomedicine

The scientist explained that WDR74 has at least two mechanisms of action. In different tumors, they have different priorities. In lung cancer cells, the protein primarily regulates WNT signaling pathways, which are active in tumor cells and passive in healthy cells of our body. In melanoma, WDR74 indirectly affects the expression of a number of other proteins, including the famous p53. The sequence is as follows: WDR74 regulates the amount of ribosomal protein RLP5, which has additional, extraribosomal properties; RLP5 regulates MDM2 protein ligase, and MDM2, in turn, leads to the degradation of p53 protein. The question of which mechanism is responsible for the expression of WDR74 itself remains unsolved.

Lung cancer is notorious for the lack of effective therapy methods. The same is melanoma: the mechanisms of its progression understood poorly. The published studies open up new paths to the development of effective curing methods for metastases of these two cancer types with targeted drugs. Such remedies should hit specific protein targets in the circulating tumor cells. The drugs development is the task of the next stage of the work of scientists from Russia, China, and Switzerland or other research groups.

In 2020, the laboratory of prof. Vladimir Katanaev and the team of Dr. Lee Jia started joint research to develop new drugs for obliterating circulating tumor cells of triple-negative breast cancer. Scientists are after DNA aptamers (analogs of antibodies, but synthesized using DNA chains) that will neutralize protein targets FZD7 and EpCAM. The work became possible thanks to a co-granting program from the Russian Federal Property Fund (19-515-55013) and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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Scientists find a way to block the growth of kidney cancer

Scientists at the MDC have discovered stem cells responsible for the most common form of kidney cancer. The team of Walter Birchmeier has found a way to block the growth of these tumors in three models of the disease.

Not all cancer cells are equal. Tumors contain potent cancer stem cells which produce metastases and can regenerate the disease if they escape a treatment. This makes them vital targets for therapies - if scientists can isolate them and probe their weaknesses. But the cells are often so rare that for many types of cancer, they have yet to be found.

Professor Walter Birchmeier's lab at the Max Delbrueck Centrum for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC), in a collaboration with the Urology Department of the Charite, has now discovered cancer stem cells responsible for the most common form of kidney cancer: clear cell renal cell carcinoma, or ccRCC. In a Berlin-wide collaboration, the scientists found a weakness. The cells depend on two critical biochemical signals. Blocking them both hinders the growth of tumors in several laboratory models of the disease, suggesting a promising new approach to treating human patients. The work also emphasizes the continued importance of mice in medical research. The study appears in the current issue of Nature Communications and includes authors from the MDC, the Urology Department of the Charite Berlin, the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), the Screening Unit of the Leibniz Institute FMP, the company EPO, and other partners.

Two biochemical weaknesses

Identifying ccRCC cancer stem cells was crucial to the project. Dr. Annika Fendler, a postdoc in the Birchmeier group and a member of the Charite Urology Department, was first author on the paper. She identified three proteins on the surfaces of the cells that enabled them to be tagged and then isolated. This permitted Dr. Hans-Peter Rahn to isolate the cells using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). The scientists found that cancer stem cells accounted for only about two percent of the total found in the human tumors.

"Our analysis of these cells shows that they depend on signals passed along two biochemical networks called WNT and NOTCH," Fendler says. Because these networks were known to play roles in other types of cancer, the lab has learned to disrupt them. They had already developed a potent inhibitor of WNT signals with the FMP, their partner institute on campus.

Previously a role for WNT and NOTCH had not been suspected in kidney tumors; mutations in these networks are rarely found in the disease. Both signals are, however, linked to a tumor suppressor gene called VHL, which is strongly associated with ccRCC. The new findings suggested that blocking WNT, NOTCH or both signals might target the cancer stem cells and interfere with the most aggressive components of the tumors.

In the clinic, inhibitors against various biochemical pathways are increasingly replacing chemotherapy in treatments for cancer patients. "But you have to know what pathways to target," Fendler says, "and not enough was known about the biology of ccRCC."

The promise of multiple model systems

Initial tests of the new inhibitors were promising. "Remarkably, three quarters of cell cultures derived from the patients responded to at least one type of inhibitor, and 50 percent of the rest were inhibited in the presence of the two inhibitors," Birchmeier says.

But here the lab confronted one of the main challenges of cancer research. "What we learn in the lab is usually very difficult to translate into the real context of a patient," Birchmeier says. "Regular cell line cultures and animal models obtained from other labs don't reflect the complexity of a disease in a person's body." A solution is to develop more types of models which are closer to the human disease.

Birchmeier and his colleagues were already proficient at extracting cancer stem cells from patients, growing them in cultures and challenging them with a huge palette of drugs. In collaborations with the company EPO on the Berlin-Buch campus, they have also transplanted patients' cancer stem cells into mice, which develop tumors virtually identical to those of their human counterparts. These animals are essential in the search for therapies: what cures a human tumor in mice might also work in a patient. In the current project, EPO injected WNT and NOTCH inhibitors, singly and and combinations, into tumor-bearing mice and observed what happened. Blocking both signals turned out to be the most effective strategy. But would it work equally well in humans?

A new type of model

Very recently scientists have learned to use patient cells to generate organoids: miniature versions of organs, containing many types of cells. They are composed of human tissue, but can be used without the ethical problems of testing drugs on human patients. Organoids had already been created for healthy kidneys, various organs, and tumors such as colon cancer.

    Other groups had tried with ccRCC, but had been less successful. The tissue didn't grow very well or did not produce organoids. Both of these factors are important in developing models for drug testing and treatments. A patient with the disease needs fast and reliable models on which treatment responses can be tested."

    Dr. Annika Fendler, postdoc in the Birchmeier group and a member of the Charite Urology Department, first author on the paper

Different models, similar results

"The most crucial finding from the study," Birchmeier says, "is to have identified the essential roles of WNT and NOTCH signaling systems in ccRCC, and to show that inhibiting them has an impact on the tumors." There remain subtle differences between the model systems that still need to be explored; at the moment, studies of mice are still needed.

In the meantime, the work provides important new experimental systems for scientists working on the disease. Annika Fendler has moved on to the Francis Crick Institute in London, where she continues to work on models of kidney cancer. Ultimately, the scientists hope, the strategy developed in the models will make the jump to the clinic, in custom-designed therapies that target the most dangerous cells in the tumors.
 
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New technique to improve melanoma detection, treatment

Combining three assays together, researchers have developed a new way to spot melanoma skin cancer cells circulating in the blood that could provide a new avenue for cancer diagnosis and therapies.

With a new approach to spot melanoma skin cancer cells circulating in the blood, the researchers raised detection rates to 72 per cent which is higher than using one test, said the study published in the British Journal of Cancer. The research has the potential to significantly improve the monitoring of cancer patients and guide future treatment.

“These preliminary findings are a first step towards a new way to stop melanoma from spreading around the body,” said lead researcher Elin Gray, Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University in Australia.

“Cancer spreads around the body when circulating tumour cells (CTCs) shed from the primary tumour and travel through the blood to form secondary tumours (metastases) in other organs.

“If we can find a way to reliably detect these cells, then we have a chance to stop melanoma in its tracks with a powerful diagnostic tool and perhaps opportunities for therapies in the future,” Gray said.

Until now melanoma circulating tumour cells have proved to be incredibly elusive, with detection rates wildly varying from 40 to 87 per cent. “We now understand that CTC detection cannot be resolved with a one-size-fits-all approach,” she said.

“There is a huge amount of variety in the shape and bioactivity of these CTCs and so they all look different and respond differently to assay tests,” Gray said.

The researcher explained that melanoma CTCs are hidden among thousands of other cells and matter in the blood. Armed with a better understanding of the complexity of the task, the researchers tried a multifaceted approach to detecting melanoma CTCs. “By combining three assays together, we raised detection rates to 72 per cent, which was a significantly and consistently higher result than using one test,” Gray said.

“We are confident this approach is a move towards the reliable detection of CTCs, but we now need to tweak the assay to include a better combination to capture the broadest range of CTCs,” she added.

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