Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death in American men. In 1999, about 179,000 new cases and 37,000 deaths were reported. As such, prostate cancer accounts for approximately 3 percent of all deaths of American men, and represents a major public health concern. Despite this fact, there is considerable controversy among medical experts regarding appropriate management of prostate cancer, specifically regarding the value of aggressive surveillance procedures. One of the main sources of confusion is the lack of accurate prostate cancer diagnostic procedures. Currently, measurement of serum levels of PSA, a glycoprotein produced exclusively by the prostate, is widely used as a screening tool for prostate cancer. In this case, serum levels of PSA greater than 4 ng/mL indicate the possibility of prostate cancer. However, PSA levels of between 4 and 10 ng/mL can be caused by a number of conditions, including BPH and infection, many of which are non-cancerous in origin. Thus, measurement of PSA levels, while useful, results in a large number of false positives. Herein, we propose to investigate whether changes in PSA glycosylation are more indicative of the physiological status of the prostate and can form the basis of a next generation cancer diagnostic that does not suffer from the same false positive rate as the current PSA test.
