UCLA researchers in the Department of Human Genetics have developed a urine-based method for non-invasive prostate cancer diagnosis. By quantifying secreted and extracellular vesicles proteomes from urine, they identified protein biomarkers that enable accurate diagnosis and risk stratification of prostate cancer, outperforming the current PSA test.
BACKGROUND: Non-invasive early diagnosis of prostate cancer is crucial for improving treatment and survival outcomes in patients. Current blood-based screening methods, like prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, can result in false positives or negatives, leading to unnecessary procedures or missed diagnoses. There is a strong need to identify novel and sensitive non-intrusive biomarkers to improve prostate cancer diagnosis. Urine has been suggested as an ideal non-invasive matrix for longitudinal biomarker studies, containing both secreted proteins and proteins encapsulated in tissue-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs). The urinary proteome is believed to predominantly originate from the genitourinary tract tissues, specifically the kidney, bladder, and prostate in men. Therefore, analyzing urinary proteome holds promise for early prostate cancer diagnosis.
INNOVATION: UCLA researchers have developed a urine-based diagnostic method for prostate cancer. They used a simple approach to enrich urinary prostatic proteins and revealed that urinary EVs are reliable surrogates of tissue proteomes. Their findings demonstrated that the urinary proteome is not only longitudinally stable but also highly effective in detecting prostate cancer and stratifying tumor risk. By studying 190 male patients, researchers demonstrate urinary EV proteomes of prostate cancer differs from non-cancerous proteomes, providing a valuable resource for further biomarker development.
POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS:
- Prostate cancer diagnosis and risk stratification
- Urine-based biomarker for prostate cancer
ADVANTAGES:
- A non-invasive urine-based diagnostic method outperforms the serum PSA test
- Urinary EVs can be isolated from urine samples and used as proxies for the prostate tissue proteome
- The urinary proteome is longitudinally stable over several years
DEVELOPMENT-TO-DATE: Successfully demonstrated the method for distinguishing between 190 treatment-naïve men with benign and malignant prostatic lesions and stratifying tumor risk.
Related papers:
Khoo, Amanda, et al. "Prostate cancer reshapes the secreted and extracellular vesicle urinary proteomes." Nature Communications 15.1 (2024): 5069.
Keywords: Urine-based, non-invasive, biomarker, urinary proteome, secreted proteome, genitourinary, diagnostics, diagnosis, risk stratification, prostate cancer, prostatic lesion, extracellular vesicle, EV