Prostate Specific or Enriched Genes as Composite Biomarkers for Prostate Cancer

摘要

Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) has been widely used as a single marker for prostate cancer diagnosis and screening. However, the high false negative and false positive rate coupled with over-diagnosis of clinically insignificant diseases have prompted search for better composite markers. The long-term goal of this study is to develop a panel of multiple protein biomarkers for prostate cancer diagnosis and stratification. Toward this end, we have orchestrated a concerted effort leveraging ISB s computational resource and proteomics expertise encompassing both antibody and mass spectrometry (MS) based technologies. To date, we have established a panel of >10 prostate- specific genes, and have embarked a two-pronged effort for validating these proteins in prostate cancer patient serum samples. On the one hand, we are experimenting antibody-based assays using an innovative technology the nCounter platform which was originally developed at ISB and subsequently commercialized by NanoString Technologies for multiplexed blood protein detection. On the other hand, we are actively developing targeted MS-based assays as part of a much grander proteomics effort characterizing tissue-specific proteins in the blood. We report here the latest progress on both efforts in the context of prostate cancer samples that we have collected over the past years.