Developing novel RPPA for the detection of metastatic prostate cancer

PROJECT SUMMARY
Reverse phase protein arrayRPPAhas emerged as a promising antibody based highly quantitative
proteomic technology suitable for profiling proteins in hundreds to thousands of patient samplesThe
throughputsensitivityand cost effectiveness of RPPAtogether with its ability to deal with minuscule
sample amountshave propelled applications of the technology in basicpreclinical and clinical
research fieldsThe technologywhich relies heavily on the paucity of high quality monospecific
antibodieshoweveris only centered on detecting a few key signaling molecules due to limited
availability of high quality phosphospecific antibodiesIn this NIH STTR Phase I studywe will
develop a novel RPPA platform based on metal ion functionalized soluble nanopolymers into
commercial products for sensitivehigh throughput profiling of signaling molecules without the
limitation of antibodiesThe novel RPPA platform will be applied to distinguish aggressive from
indolent human prostate tumors in xenograft mouse modelsWe hypothesis that prostate cancer can
be classified by measuring phosphorylation changes on key oncogenes and thus a RPPA platform
can be used as a discovery and preclinical tool to distinguish aggressive from indolent tumorsThe
following aims will be completedAimOptimization of functionalized RPPA for capture and
detection of phosphopropteinsAimPathway activation profiling in indolent and aggressive
prostate cancer xenograft mouse modelsBy the completion of Phase I studywe expect that an
analytical platform can be established with high sensitivitywide dynamic rangeexcellent
reproducibilityand affordable cost