Circulating tumor cells: A possible biomarker for diagnosis and therapies of prostate cancer

International Conference on Prostate Cancer

June 22-24, 2015 Florida, USA

Pravin D Potdar

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Cancer Sci Ther

Abstract :

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in all over the world. In 1980s, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the serum Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test as a screening test to detect asymptomatic and earlystage prostate cancer. However, PSA is a relatively poor, nonspecific test, which results in false-positive and false-negative results. Several cellular and molecular bio-markers are established by several investigators. However so far, there is no specific biomarker has been approved by US FDA as a prognostic and predictive marker for prostate cancer. As cancer is a multi-step process there is a possibility to use this property of cancer for identification of specific cell type or a bio-marker for early detection and management of prostate cancer. A number of molecular events and cytogenetic markers are gaining attention as the potential prognostic indicators for prostate cancer. In the current era of genomic medicine, evaluating genetic variants of Prostate cancer cells is considered as a cutting-edge technology to resolve this problem. The purpose of this study is to search for reliable molecular markers of prostate cancer cells that can accurately stratify patients for their risk in developing prostate cancer. Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are rare cells that are shed from primary and metastatic tumor and circulated into the peripheral blood of patients thus represent a simple way of performing non-invasive tumor cells testing for prostate cancer patients. Enumeration of CTCs burden and its molecular profiling before and after therapy will certainly help in monitoring and predicting response to therapy in these patients. My laboratory is presently working on development of methodology to isolate and identify circulating tumor cells from various cancers such as breast, colon, lung, and ovarian and prostate cancer. Using the cell based technology we have identified circulating tumor cells from prostate cancer patients and studied their morphological features by Light and Phase Contrast Microscopy. These circulating tumor cells from prostate cancer patients will be further confirmed for their epithelial and metastatic properties by using epithelial and several cancer metastatic markers by RT/PCR and Immunofluorescence microscopy. The presentation is basically the overview of the importance of established bio-markers for diagnosis and therapies of prostate cancer along with latest advancement in isolation and molecular characterization of CTCs in diagnosis and therapies of prostate cancer.