Glycoprofiling: A key to early prostate cancer diagnostics

Prostate cancer rates among the most common diagnosed cancer in men in the European Union and is the first in incidence and third in mortality among all cancer diseases. As with all types of cancer, the positive outcome of treatment depends on early diagnostics and treatment initiation. Currently, blood serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) level test is being widely used for prostate cancer detection, however, PSA level elevation may be also caused by other reasons than prostate cancer (e.g. benign prostate hyperplasia or prostatitis). The typically used cut-off for PSA is 4 ng/ml, however, results from 4 to 10 ng/ml are considered a diagnostic grey zone and thus require further examination. To avoid overdiagnosis and overtreatment, a need for new ways of prostate cancer diagnostics arose. As perturbation in protein glycosylation is a typical sign of tumorigenesis and since PSA is a glycoprotein, monitoring of glycosylation changes in its glycan structure can provide a solution for better detection of the prostate cancer. Proposed biosensor is able to recognize these changes caused by malignant processes in their early stage and thus increase the chance of successful treatment.