Despite rapid advances in the fields of molecular and cell biology, it is still widely debated as to how neoplastic prostate cells progress through carcinogenesis. Prostate cancer is the second most prevalent cancer in men globally. Prostate, lung and bronchus, and colorectal cancers account for 44% of all cases in men, with prostate cancer alone accounting for 1 in 5 new diagnoses.

Cancer research has generated an intricate “body of knowledge” showing that prostate cancer is a disease that involves dynamic changes in the genome. Prostate cancer is a dynamic system that is discontinuous in space and time but advances through qualitatively different states, that is, the configuration of a system at any particular instant that is specified by a great number of dynamic variables.

Viewing cancer as a system that is dynamically complex in time and space will probably reveal more about its underlying behavioral characteristics. This way of thinking may further help to clarify concepts, interpret new and old experimental data, indicate alternative experiments, and categorize the acquired knowledge on prostate cancer and its precursor lesions. It is encouraging that medicine, biology, psychology, and mathematics continue to contribute together towards a comprehensive understanding of prostate cancer complexity.

We invite authors to contribute original articles, papers, and reviews that will illustrate prostate cancer as one of the most complex diseases, determined by distinct processes and controls operating over much broader scales and by structural controls that may operate at scales ranging from molecular to environmental. The primary aims are to investigate prostate cancer as a complex nonlinear disease, to propose mathematical models that aid the comprehension of this neoplasia, and to discover diagnostic, predictive biomarkers or potential targets for the development of new and more efficacious therapeutic strategies.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Recent discoveries on the prostate cancer genomics
• Proteomics and bioinformatics in prostate cancer research
• New diagnostic and predictive tissue and serum biomarkers of prostate cancer
• Computer-aided image analysis systems in prostate cancer research
• Mathematical modeling of prostate cancer dynamics
• Development of innovative therapeutic strategies for treating prostate cancer
• Psychological effects on men with prostate cancer and their partners