Major League Baseball and the Prostate Cancer Foundation teamed up this year to form the Home Run Challenge in honor of Father's Day. Their gift to father's across the country: for each home run hit in 60 selected games between June 6 and today, June 17, raised money for prostate cancer, the second most common cancer for men in the United States.

Some fans of this cause made pledges; some posted online tributes to their dads at Dockers San Francisco. For every message submitted, the company donated one dollar. Some messages were even shown in Times Square for all to see.

I just checked the status of the Home Run Challenge on this Father's Day morning and found the most updated total of home runs to be 91. Leading the accomplishment are Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez, and Alfonso Soriano. The current Team Home Run leader: the Cincinnati Reds.

A new PSA density test may help identify men at high risk of developing prostate cancer.

The test, used after a biopsy finds no signs of life-threatening prostate cancer, can compare the size of a man's prostate to his levels of a cancer-related protein called prostate-specific antigen (PSA).

Even though both men with high and low PSA densities can have clean biopsies, studies show it's men with very high PSA densities who are at greatest risk of developing prostate cancer. This and the fact that biopsies can miss between 20 and 33 percent of tumors makes this new test a potential breakthrough for the prevention and detection of prostate cancer.

A popular baldness drug manufactured by Merck & Co Inc called Finasteride, better know as Propecia, can mask an important marker used to detect prostate cancer. High levels of the PSA in the blood can signal prostate cancer or other problems such as an enlarged prostate.

Propecia has been shown in a study to artificially lower the prostate specific antigen (PSA). Dr. Anthony D'Amico, the lead author of the study from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, recommends middle-aged men taking Propecia to have their PSA levels multiplied by two to account for the difference. He says, "The main finding is that this drug called Propecia, which men use for hair loss typically between the ages of 30-60, affects the PSA levels".

Merck said in a statement that information has been included for customers on the label since the product was first introduced in 1997. It advises patients who undergo serum PSA tests to tell their doctor if they are taking Propecia.

It may be on the label but I hope our doctors are aware of this. Are they asking the patients if they are using Propecia? I'm sure there are plenty of men who have not read the fine print and don't mention this information to their physicians.

PSA tests are a recommended way to screen for prostate cancer, however the test is not very precise. Too much PSA, prostate-specific antigen, in a man's blood can indicate that he has either a benign enlarged prostate or cancer. Only a biopsy can tell the difference.

A new study suggests that physicians should monitor not only the number of the PSA test but also the trend of the results. In other words, if the blood test shows a jump by a few points, even though the number is still in normal range, it could be a sign that the patient has prostate cancer.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggests evaluating how fast a man's PSA level rises may help that tricky balancing act of when to biopsy and how aggressive to treat.

What does that mean for men today? That its a good idea to order a biopsy for a man with a low but fast-rising PSA.

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and albumin (ALB) are proteins found in the blood that can indicate the presence or spread of colon cancer. Using this information researchers wanted to know if the levels of CEA and ALB could be predictors of survival among patients with colorectal cancer. The Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology published an article that says how researchers recently evaluated data of 170 patients with early stage colon cancer.

The study showed at five years that the levels of CEA and ALB in the blood prior to treatment were significantly associated with long term survival among patients with early colorectal cancer.

This information can be used to allow treatments to become more individualized for the patients, knowing who is at greater risk for distant recurrence might warrant more aggressive treatment.

Cancer vaccines continue to be seen as significant progress in cancer prevention. As an example, cervical cancer vaccines have proven to be so successful in all clinical trials, the vaccines will become available for women this summer. If you watch television, you might have seen the new ad campaign directed as raising awareness for women regarding the virus associated with cervical cancer.

Now, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Arkansas Cancer Research Center has been awarded a $2.9 million federal grant to study a new type of carbohydrate-targeting vaccine to prevent the recurrence of breast cancer. One important carbohydrate present on breast cancer cells is the Lewis Y, LeY, antigen. The vaccine would provide antibodies to LeY that have been shown effective in killing breast cancer cells. According to the researchers, previous clinical studies have shown that the survival rate for cancer patients with other types of cancer increases with carbohydrate-targeting antibodies. Before now, this has not been tested in regard to breast cancer. Won't it be nice, if one day, preventing some cancers is a matter of getting properly vaccinated.