Application of urinary markers in prostate cancer diagnosis and prognosis

• Grant number: 11/20638-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Surgery
• Principal Investigator: Alberto Azoubel Antunes
• Grantee: Gabriel Carvalho dos Anjos Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Prostate cancer (PC) is the 2nd type most frequently diagnosed malignancy in men, and represents 6% of all causes of death in men worldwide.Despite all medical advances in this area, including the discovery of prostate specific antigen (PSA) for 20 years, are still found many gaps in the diagnosis of PC. PSA is a prostate specific protein but not from PCa and therefore change can be found in benign prostate diseases such as prostate hyperplasia (BPH), the prostatitis, among others. Moreover, the method of choice for the diagnosis of PC is prostate biopsy guided by ultrasound, which fails to diagnose up to 30% of tumors. Thus, one notes the need for new methods for more precise evaluation of PC and one of the options are biological markers of the tumor. Many methods of evaluation of markers of prostate tumors have been analyzed in the literature and, so far, no marker still has the potential to replace the PSA. Most of these markers are collected in the prostate tissue or blood of patients, but the urine seems to be the most appropriate means for evaluation of markers, since it is noninvasive and easy to perform. Because PC is a multifocal disease and genetically heterogeneous character is likely that a single marker is not sufficient to accurately assess the disease and, therefore, a panel of markers would be the best way to diagnose the tumor, and can predict the behavior the same. Thus, this study will be analyzed a panel of markers in the urine of Pca patients with PC and compared the gene expression of these same markers in the urine of patients with BPH. Moreover, this relationship will be evaluated gene expression with the prognosis of patients, as will also be correlated with patients with metastatic PCa. The genetic markers of PC will be studied: PCA3, PSMA, PGC, hK2, EPCA-2, GREb1, PSA and MMP9. (AU)