Integrated RNA and metabolite profiling of urine liquid biopsies for prostate cancer biomarker discovery.

Sensitive and specific diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for prostate cancer (PCa) are urgently needed. Urine samples are a non-invasive means to obtain abundant and readily accessible "liquid biopsies". Herein we used urine liquid biopsies to identify and characterize a novel group of urine-enriched RNAs and metabolites in patients with PCa and normal individuals with or without benign prostatic disease.

Gold nanoparticle-enabled blood test for early stage cancer detection and risk assessment.

When citrate ligands-capped gold nanoparticles are mixed with blood sera, a protein corona is formed on the nanoparticle surface due to the adsorption of various proteins in the blood to the nanoparticles. Using a two-step gold nanoparticle-enabled dynamic light scattering assay, we discovered that the amount of human immunoglobulin G (IgG) in the gold nanoparticle protein corona is increased in prostate cancer patients compared to noncancer controls. Two pilot studies conducted on blood serum samples collected at Florida Hospital and obtained from Prostate Cancer Biorespository Network (PCBN) revealed that the test has a 90-95% specificity and 50% sensitivity in detecting early stage prostate cancer, representing a significant improvement over the current PSA test.

Long noncoding RNAs as putative biomarkers for prostate cancer detection.

Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality among US males. There is an urgent unmet need to develop sensitive and specific biomarkers for the early detection of prostate cancer to reduce overtreatment and accompanying morbidity. We identified a group of differentially expressed long noncoding RNAs in prostate cancer cell lines and patient samples and further characterized six long noncoding RNAs (AK024556, XLOC_007697, LOC100287482, XLOC_005327, XLOC_008559, and XLOC_009911) in prostatic adenocarcinoma tissue samples (Gleason score >6.