ucsdhealthsciences: Uh oh! A diagnosis of prostate cancer can be an “uh oh” moment. Afte

ucsdhealthsciences:

Uh oh!

A diagnosis of prostate cancer can be an “uh oh” moment. After skin cancer, it’s the most common cancer in American men, with more than 238,000 new cases diagnosed each year and almost 30,000 deaths.

However, the confocal micrograph above, produced by Xiaochen Lu and C. Chase Bolt at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is not an uh-oh moment. Rather, it may be an “ah-hah!”

It depicts the actual prostateandureter of an embryonic mouse – a winning image from the 2013 Olympus BioScapescompetition.

Mouse models of prostate cancer are widely used, in part because the disease is often very slow progressing in humans and typically not detected in men until their 60s or older.