# ANALYSIS OF METASTATIC POTENTIAL OF PROSTATE CARCINOMAS

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL · 1987 · $91,051

## Abstract

Adenocarcinoma of the prostate can vary widely in its clinical
aggressiveness.  Some patients with prostatic cancers can live for many
years with localized disease without apparent metastases while in other
patients, the prostatic cancer metastasizes rapidly.  If the prostatic
cancer is localized (Stage B1 and B2) then radical prostatectomy or
radiation therapy offers a curative approach for management of this
lesion.  However, if the lesion only appears to be clinically localized but
has already produced micrometastases, then radical surgery or radiation
therapy will not be curative and aggressive systemic therapy would be
required.  Thus, if a diagnostic method could be developed which could
index the metastatic ability of an individual primary prostatic
adenocarcinoma then the clinical management of these tumors would be
improved.  Unfortunately, at present, there are no diagnostic methods which
can accurately assess the metastatic capability of these tumors.

Within the last few years a large amount of research has demonstrated that
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has the potential to be a powerful
technique to non-invasively detect disease processes.  One area in which
NMR has been successful is in the exploration of the physical properties of
tissue water in cancerous versus normal tissue.  Investigations have shown
that the NMR relaxation times (i.e. T1 (spin-lattice) and T2 (spin-spin))
of water protons are distinguishable between homologous normal and tumor
tissues for many different types of human and animal cancers.  The primary
aim of this proposal is to determine whether these NMR techniques can be
utilized in combination with biochemical markers to "fingerprint" the
metastatic potential of cancerous lesions.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 3178873
- **Project number:** 5R01CA039633-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL
- **SAM.gov UEI:** D3LHU66KBLD5
- **Principal Investigator:** LESTER KWOCK
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 1987
- **Award amount:** $91,051
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1985-06-01 → 1988-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3178873

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 3178873, ANALYSIS OF METASTATIC POTENTIAL OF PROSTATE CARCINOMAS (5R01CA039633-03). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/3178873. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*