ANALYSIS OF THE PROTEOMIC PROFILE AND COMPOSITION IN PROSTATE CANCER PATIENTS

Prostate cancer is a significant public health concern among American men. The current screening method for prostate cancer relies on elevated levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), which can be unreliable. Alternatively, a protein fingerprint identifies a characteristic set of proteins indicative of disease. Previous research in this laboratory group has identified a baseline protein fingerprint for prostate cancer. Here, an analysis is performed to identify how the protein fingerprint changes in composition throughout disease progression through inspection of the proteomic composition of human serum and review of the current scientific literature to investigate why these proteins might be dysregulated with respect to the metabolic activity of malignant cells. It was found that different disease states (metastasis, positive biopsy, negative biopsy, and healthy control) had distinctly different sets of upregulated and downregulated proteins. These dysregulated proteins had varying levels of relevance to physiological mechanisms involved in the progression of prostate cancer, with some proteins having a clearly defined role in cancer development while other proteins had unclear roles and appeared to have primarily diagnostic value at this time, elucidating areas for potential further research. Together these results provide a better understanding of the metabolic progression and consequences of prostate cancer, potentially contributing to earlier, more accurate diagnosis in the future