Major Candidate Genes Associated with Risk of Hereditary and Sporadic Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer risk factors gain more awareness in the world nowadays, due to the increasing incidents, which vary among different ethnic groups. Researches about genetic risk factors might help for more understanding of the initiation and development of prostate cancer and estimating risk values among individuals, and develop multi-perspective therapy approaches. Many efforts were achieved to study and evaluate high-risk variants associated with prostate tumors; through different populations. This evaluation depended on the high frequencies of these variants and the role of such variants in cell cycle and DNA repairing system. In this review, we highlighted the major candidate genes and molecular events of prostate cancer: BRCA, CHEK2, HOXB13, ELAC2, SPOP, PTEN, TMPRSS2-ERG Fusion and other less effective variants, in an attempt to explore the molecular seriousness and relative risk of suspected variants associated with hereditary and sporadic prostate cancer. The definition of particular groups of genes that lead prostate cancer prognosis is a difficult task, since the genetic and proteomic studies detected numerous susceptibility alleles complicated with risk of prostate tumors. The estimation of high-risk variants may be a key issue regarding prostate cancer diagnosis and therapy.