A team of scientists has found markers for testicular cancer. This will enable physicians to detect the disease before it develops, via a simple sperm sample.

Discovery of the markers has made it possible to see from a simple sperm sample whether a patient will develop testicular cancer. Thus, treatment can be provided for men who would otherwise not have found the disease until much later, and a more gentle treatment can begin at an earlier stage.

This is beneficial particularly for men with testicular cancer, because they usually discover the disease in their 20s or 30s, which means they have a long life ahead of them with possible late complications from cancer treatment.

Men with poor sperm quality, in particular, those who consult the hospital because of fertility problems, are being examined to detect possible early stages of testicular cancer. According to the investigators, poor sperm quality and predisposition to testicular cancer can be traced all the way back to fetal germ-cell development.

A research team at Rigshospitalet (Copenhagen, Denmark) has developed a special scanning microscope and software, which can analyze sperm samples. The discovery has attracted much attention from colleagues abroad.

"So far, we are cooperating with researchers in Norway, Germany, and Poland, who can make use of our discovery in different ways. The equipment is expensive, so to begin with we are helping by analyzing their samples, but in the long term we would like to join up with a company that can supply a total kit for use by other researchers and physicians in different European countries," said Kristian Almstrup from the department of growth and reproduction at Rigshospitalet.

Previously, suspicion of testicular cancer meant that a patient was subjected to one or two painful biopsies, and despite a 95% survival rate, the testicular cancer diagnosis meant having to go through treatment that could be extremely hard on the body.

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