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