Proteomics of human prostate cancer biospecimens: the global, systems-wide perspective for Protein markers with potential clinical utility

Abstract

Despite intense global efforts, no new clinical and/or viable biomarkers have been established to overcome the limitation of the prostate specific antigen in the early diagnosis and prognosis of prostate cancer (PCa). The current proteomic approaches to PCa biomarker discovery, each have distinct advantages and disadvantages, yet when combined hold real promise in the coming years. One key approach to this effort is the development of non-targeted, depletion-free and quantitative liquid chromatography–ultra high resolution tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS) pipelines for the systems-wide interrogation of the diverse proteomes encompassed in whole tissue and blood serum or plasma. Derived quantitative proteomes can be decoded for their biomedical relevance with advanced bioinformatics and bibliographic mining to yield promising ‘molecular portraits’ that can gauge prostatic disease at the serological level. Their functional annotation, although potentially useful, is beyond our current level of biological understanding and should not be requisite for their effective use in the clinical monitoring of prostatic disease.

Keywords::

• cell-lines
• lab-on-a-chip
• LC–MS
• prostate cancer
• prostate specific antigen
• protein panels
• serological markers
• SRM assays
• tissue

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the proteomics community for their insightful research studies and apologize for the omission of any key studies due to space constraints. The authors are also grateful to members of the Townsend and Garbis laboratories for their research input; and especially Berna Sayan, Kevin Lawrence and Antigoni Manousopoulou-Garbis for proofreading the article. The authors are, as always very thankful to their funders and their fundraisers, especially Cancer Research UK, Wessex Medical Research, Wessex Cancer Trust, Male Uprising in Guernsey (MUG), the Gerald Kerkut Trust, University of Manchester, and the University of Southampton ‘Annual Adventures in Research’ Grant and the EU. Finally, a special word of gratitude for Roger Allsopp and Derek Coates without whose support and enthusiasm they could not achieve any of their research.

Financial & competing interests disclosure:

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.