Grant: Operating Grant

Project summary: Drs. Wang and Gleave propose to use unique methods to identify gene-related compounds, i.e., miRNAs, in blood serum from prostate cancer patients which may be used as prognostic markers to predict which early stage prostate cancers should be treated and which should not. Previous research: There is a great need for reliable prognostic markers to predict which early stage prostate cancers are likely to become metastatic (able to spread throughout the body) and hence lead to terminal disease and accordingly should be treated. For the majority of prostate cancer patients the disease is non-life threatening and such patients should be spared from aggressive treatment. Searching for metastatic biomarkers is very difficult; one of the major challenges in such endeavours is the cellular diversity of tumor samples, usually consisting of both metastatic and non-metastatic cancer cell populations. To address this problem, the group has recently developed unique prostate cancer sublines from one patient that can be grown in special, immuno-deficient mice: one subline is metastatic and the other is non-metastatic. Analysis of the two sublines has led to identification of a number miRNAs that are associated with metastasis and which form a foundation for the proposed study. Project description: The proposed study will validate if the newly discovered metastasis-associated miRNAs are 1) more highly expressed in clinical metastatic prostate cancer samples than in non-metastatic samples; and 2) potentially useful as serum biomarkers for predicting metastatic potential of early stage prostate cancers. Impact and relevance: The development of clinically useful biomarkers for predicting which early stage prostate cancers are likely to become metastatic would generate considerable improvement of the management of early stage prostate cancer patients.