Scientists have discovered that there are five distinct types of prostate cancer.

The team from Cancer Research UK has also found a way of distinguishing between the five types. It believes this could have major implications for how doctors treat this type of cancer in the future.

Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer found in men. Every year in Ireland, over 2,000 men are newly diagnosed with the disease and currently, there are more men living with this type of cancer than any other.

The scientists studied samples of both healthy and prostate cancer tissue from over 250 men.

They looked for abnormal chromosomes and measured the activity of 100 different genes associated with prostate cancer. By doing this, they were able to group the tumours into five distinct types. Each of these types had its own genetic fingerprint.

"Our exciting results show that prostate cancer can be classified into five genetically different types. These findings could help doctors decide on the best course of treatment for each individual patient, based on the characteristics of their tumour," explained the study's author, Dr Alastair Lamb, of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.

He said that the next step is to confirm these findings in bigger studies ‘and drill down into the molecular nuts and bolts of each specific prostate cancer type'.

"By carrying out more research into how the different diseases behave, we might be able to develop more effective ways to treat prostate cancer patients in the future, saving more lives," he noted.

Commenting on the study, Prof Malcolm Mason, a prostate cancer expert with Cancer Research UK, pointed out that the disease can behave very differently in different men.

"The challenge in treating prostate cancer is that it can either behave like a pussycat - growing slowly and unlikely to cause problems in a man's lifetime - or a tiger - spreading aggressively and requiring urgent treatment. But at the moment we have no reliable way to distinguish them. This means that some men may get treatment they don't need, causing unnecessary side-effects, while others might benefit from more intensive treatment," he explained.

He added that these findings ‘could be game changing' if the results are confirmed in larger clinical trials.

"This research could give us better information to guide each man's treatment, even helping us to choose between treatments for men with aggressive cancers. Ultimately this could mean more effective treatment for the men who need it, helping to save more lives and improve the quality of life for many thousands of men with prostate cancer."

Details of these findings are published in the journal, EBioMedicine.