Protein Panels for the Early Diagnosis/Prognosis and Treatment of Aggressive Prostate Cancer - (HJF 528-18)

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men and fourth most common among all cancers. Researchers at HJF in collaboration with researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have developed a novel protein-panel based diagnosis or prognosis method that can diagnose and identify if the subject has prostate cancer or has a risk to develop aggressive prostate cancer. Further, this method helps develop and administer a personalized, therapeutically effective cancer dosage therapy. Predictive accuracy of this protein marker subset has been validated in a cohort of prostate patients.

Applications and Advantages

Offers better sensitivity and specificity over current method of diagnosis that measures serum Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) levels
Overcomes common prognosis challenges associated with over-treatment and undertreatment
Helps develop and administer a therapeutically effective amount of cancer therapy

Innovation Description

Fig.1 Shows the result of adding the 5-protein classifier (FOLH1, SPARC, TGFB1, CAMKK2, and PSA) to standard of care (SOC) to predict Distant Metastasis (DM) in a testing cohort

Prostate cancer, the most common cause of death among American men is known to be heterogenous, ranging from asymptomatic to rapid progression and to systemic malignancy. Although the wide-spread use of PSA screening led to earlier detection, it also resulted in over diagnosis and overtreatment of indolent disease. While the over-arching issue is distinguishing lethal from non-lethal disease, four clinical problems associated with management of prostate cancer from early to late stages include: 1) Diagnostic Accuracy 2) Risk Stratification 3) Recurrent Disease Management and 4) Focal Therapy. To address the challenges of clinical assessment and treatment, developing diagnosis or prognosis methods based on new molecular biomarkers is important.

This research team has developed novel protein-panels for diagnosis and treatment of aggressive prostate cancer. Expression of aggressive prostate cancer-related biomarkers (such as FOLH1, SPARC, TGFB1, CAMKK2, NCOA2, EGFR, PSA or combinations thereof) is measured in a subject sample using Mass Spectrometry based Selective Reaction Monitoring method (MS-SRM).

Usage of identified protein panels enhances accurate characterization of the disease, predicts risk of biologic aggressiveness and when used as reference standards, these biomarkers can help recommend the most appropriate therapeutic technique and dosage for effective treatment.

Inventors

Jennifer Cullen, Ph.D. HJF
Gyorgy Petrovics, Ph.D. HJF
Jacob Kagan, Ph.D. NCI
Sudhir Srivastava, Ph.D. NCI
Tao Liu, Ph.D. PNNL
Karin Rodland, Ph.D. PNNL

Innovation Status

The project involved selection, testing and validation of candidate prostate cancer biomarkers for prediction of prostate cancer progression among patients diagnosed with benign or non-aggressive prostate cancer. Please see: Cancers (Basel) 2020 May 17;12(5):1268 . Future studies will include a retrospective analysis of biopsy specimens from patients who had radical prostatectomy of organ confined prostate cancers.