3D characterization of Gleason grades in prostate carcinoma by X-ray nano-holotomography

Prostate carcinoma is the most common cancer in men and, along with bronchial carcinoma, one of the best-studied malignancies. However, the unique Gleason grading system has been extensively revised but still constitutes the basis for the WHO-ISUP and serves as a predictive marker established worldwide. Depending on the degree of differentiation, different therapeutic strategies are applied. But the unique clinical and molecular heterogeneity of prostate cancer remains largely unconsidered. However, based on this scoring, no correlation to an overall survival rate can be established to date. This suggests that the two-dimensional examination based on thin slide sections used so far has hidden certain information about the specific carcinoma. These structural features require a resolution of well below 1 µm, and in combination with the excellent soft-tissue contrast, the X-ray nano-holotomography (XNH) setup at the ID16A-beamline is ideally suited for our research case.