Proteome analysis of prostate cancer.

In this paper, we briefly review cancer proteomics in general, with particular attention to our proteome analyses of prostate cancer. Our efforts include development of new tools and novel approaches to discovering proteins potentially useful as cancer diagnostic and/or prognostic biomarkers or as therapeutic targets. To this end, we analyzed prostate cancer proteomes using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis employing agarose gels for the initial isoelectric focusing step (agarose 2-DE), with mass spectrometry used for protein identification. Agarose 2-DE offers advantages over the more widely used immobilized pH gradient 2-DE for separating high molecular mass proteins (15-500 kDa), thereby increasing its power to detect changes in the cancer's high-molecular mass proteomes.