| abstract |
It has been found that certain members of the HERV-K family located at the 20.428 megabase (22q11.2) of chromosome 22 are preferentially and significantly upregulated in prostate tumors. The present invention provides a method for diagnosing prostate cancer, the method comprising detecting the presence or absence of a viral expression product in a patient sample. This virus has five characteristics not found in other HERV-K members: (1) a specific nucleic acid sequence carried by the virus, and thus a specific amino acid sequence; (2) a tandem 5 'LTR (3) fragmented 3 ′ LTR; (4) env gene interrupted by alu insertion; and (5) unique gag sequence. |