Hi, this is Ira Flato, and you're listening to Science Friday.

What's the best way to screen for prostate cancer?

The reality is that PSA is probably the best screening test in the history of oncology if it is used well.

And the problem and the controversy all relate to how it gets used.

Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer a few weeks ago.

The cancer had already spread to the bone.

The news got a lot of people, including myself,

thinking, how did his doctors not catch that cancer sooner? And what exactly are the best practices

for screening for prostate cancer? Turns out it's a bit more complicated than it might seem on the

surface.

Prostate cancer is a world filled with confusing advice for diagnosis and treatment of patients.

So we're going to try to sort through it.

And joining me now to help unpack those complexities are my guests. Dr. Matthew Cooperberg, urologic oncologist and professor at the University of California,

San Francisco, and Dr. Andrew Vickers, a statistician who studies prostate cancer screening at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center here in New York.

Welcome to Science Friday, both of you.

Glad to be here. Good to be here. Nice to have you. Dr. Cooperberg,

let me start with you. Let's start by going over some basics about prostate cancer screening.

Many people are familiar with the famous PSA test. Tell us exactly what it measures and what it means.

Sure. So PSA stands for prostate-specific antigen.

It is a protein made by the prostate gland, a small portion of which gets out into the bloodstream,

and we can measure that, and it's an indicator of what's going on in the prostate.

Now, it's prostate-specific, not prostate-can cancer-specific, and other things that affect the prostate

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