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Article History

Received: 19 December 2024

Accepted: 17 March 2025

First Online: 3 April 2025

Declarations

:

: Blood samples were collected from patients with mPC at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Ethics Committee of the City of Hamburg (Hamburger Ärztekammer, PV5392). All patients gave informed consent.

: All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

: Gunhild von Amsberg is consultant or advisor of Amgen, Roche, BMS, Astellas, Sanofi, Janssen, MSD, Ipsen, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, EISAI, Bayer. The other authors declare no potential conflicts of interest.

: Blood-based biomarkers of metastatic prostate cancer are urgently needed to identify patients with progression to aggressive and androgen-independent disease, and to monitor treatment response and emerging therapy resistance. We have developed a convenient PCR-based method to identify neuroendocrine prostate cancers based on their gene expression in circulating tumor cells. This test allows clinical monitoring of patients under androgen receptor-directed treatment and enables the early identification of progression to androgen-independent and therapy-induced neuroendocrine prostate cancer. In this way, suitable treatment strategies can be applied at an early stage before clinical symptoms and deterioration of general condition have occurred.