Project 170934

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among North American men and is in general treated by surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Cell-surface membrane proteins comprise more than half of the known drug targets. Proteomics is the functional, large-scale study of the sets of proteins expressed in a biological entity. It can provide an unbiased read-out of a pathophysiological state and provide a systems-wide insight into specific diseases. Here, we will apply a novel proteomics technology to gain insights into the expression of cell-surface membrane proteins in primary human prostate cancer cells and compare these to healthy controls. We will further determine the changes in protein expression in these prostate cancer cells in response to several common therapeutic treatment strategies. We will then pragmatically mine these data to generate a limited number of novel targets used as diagnostic biomarkers, for tumor imaging or targeted therapies. Knowledge of protein expression on the cell-surface of primary human prostate cancer cells will provide targets for biomarker discovery and function as a springboard for the development of novel combinatorial treatment strategies for prostate cancer. To facilitate streamlined data analysis, we will develop an in-house database management system with web-based access for maximum impact and sharing of the data with the greater scientific community.

using budding yeast as a model system to study the link between cell shape regulation and cell division