A majority of ovarian cancer patients presenting with diseases at late stages have poor survival rates. Efforts to improve this with more effective screening methods are clearly desirable. Traditionally, screening for ovarian cancer has focused on imaging or the use of serum markers. However, the high cost of imaging and the failure of 20 years of research to discover any better biomarkers than CA125, suggests a new approach would be worthwhile. Therefore, besides using serum samples for biomarker discovery, we will explore the option of using urine as an alternative body fluid to discover the potential peptide markers, which may ultimately be transformed into a reliable home screening test. This pilot project will test the hypothesis that urinary peptides, which normally are small size, thermodynamically stable and less interactive, could be useful urinary markers for ovarian cancer. In this project, we propose to: 1.) Apply innovative proteomic technologies such as multidimensional liquid chromatography (MD-LC), mass spectrometry, fluorescent labeling with two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) to generate urinary peptide profiles from the classified ovarian cancer subtypes and the age-matched healthy women. 2.) Using bio-informatic tools to select, identify and characterize the novel urinary peptides including modifications, which are specifically associated with ovarian cancers. 3.) Develop the reliable urine immunoassays and normalization methods, and apply the panel of urinary markers for validation in a large study including pre-operative urine specimens and normal controls. This project, if successful, could fundamentally shift the approach to the early detection of ovarian cancer and significantly improve the survival rate of cases detected. ? ?
