Many patients with prostate cancer are treated with drugs to which they quickly develop resistance.

Now, a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified an RNA molecule that suppresses prostate tumors.

The scientists found that prostate cancers develop ways to shut down this RNA molecule to allow themselves to grow. However, when they implanted mice with human prostate tumor samples, the new treatment restored this so-called long noncoding RNA—and they've hailed it as a new strategy to treat the cancer which has developed resistance to hormonal therapies.