A67

Proteomic profiling of prostate cancer progression by SELDI-TOF-MS

Jamal Alruwaili, Ian Cree, Paul Townsend, Sam Larkin, Claire Aukim-Hastie

University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most common cancers in men second only to lung cancer. The diagnosis of PCa is increasing due to Prostate Specific Antigen PSA testing, however mortality rates have remained largely unchanged. Studies have shown deficiencies in both PSA and biopsy in predicting patient outcome. Therefore, there is a need for serum biomarkers that can indicate prostate cancer prognosis (indolent and aggressive forms) and inform clinical management. The aims of this study are to identify differential serum protein expression between serum taken from prostate cancer patients with indolent and aggressive disease categorised by Gleason grade and biochemical recurrence, through the use of SELDI-TOF-MS mass spectrometry analysis.

70 serum samples were used as a training set to develop a classification algorithm which enabled the separation of protein profiles of aggressive and indolent disease. A further 30 serum samples were randomly tested in order to validate progression markers and models found with the training set. This study resulted in 27 candidate biomarkers that were able to differentiate between indolent and aggressive prostate cancer groups. These biomarkers are currently undergoing validation, the results of which will be presented at this meeting.