Project Details

Description

Despite recent advances in PSA-testing and the development of several novel therapies for castrate-resistant prostate cancer, PCa remains the leading cause of male cancer deaths with metastatic disease, accounting for more than 90% of cancer related deaths.
The objective of this project is to satisfy the need for novel disease biomarkers that reliably predict clinical benefit in tumor recurrence in prostate cancer (PCa). Different approaches to discover and evaluate novel non-invasive prognostic biomarkers, including four kallikrein markers and microseminoprotein-beta (MSP), circulating tumor cell (CTC) associated transcripts in whole blood will be utilized, and novel ultrasonic wave based microfluidic techniques (acoustophoresis) to enable unbiased, label-free isolation of extracellular vesicles (EVs) and CTCs for subsequent molecular interrogation will be utilized. Our acoustic separation methods are label-free and is therefore likely to detect new populations of CTCs and EVs compared to today’s available techniques, particularly due to less stringent definitions of a CTC. We aim to characterize the isolated CTCs and EVs after acoustic isolation and identify markers, which will lead to personalized medicine and more efficient cancer treatment.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date2017/01/012021/12/31

Collaborative partners

  • Lund University (lead)
  • Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
  • Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Funding

  • Swedish Research Council

UKÄ subject classification

  • Urology and Nephrology
  • Cancer and Oncology
  • Medical Biotechnology