MASS SPECTROMETRY Articles

There is a significant unmet need for clinical reflex tests that increase the specificity of prostate-specific antigen blood testing, the longstanding but imperfect tool for prostate cancer diagnosis.

Statins have anticancer effects on prostate cancer both in vitro and in vivo. It is unclear whether this is due to systemic cholesterol-lowering or direct local growth inhibition in the prostate. It is also unclear whether statins can access the prostate; lipophilic statins could, in theory, pass lipid-enriched cell membranes by passive diffusion.

Touch spray-mass spectrometry (TS-MS) is an ambient ionization technique (ionization of unprocessed samples in the open air) that may find intraoperative applications in quickly identifying the disease state of cancerous tissues and in defining surgical margins.

Abiraterone acetate (AA) is a prodrug of abiraterone, a selective and potent steroidal cytochrome P450 17alpha- hydroxylase-17,20-lyase (CYP17A1) blocking androgen synthesis in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer.

Sunitinib malate, an oral multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor approved for the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma, gastrointestinal stromal tumor, and well-differentiated pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, has been identified as a potential candidate for therapeutic drug monitoring approach.

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most common cancer types among men. The quantification of prostate-specific antigen used for PCa detection has revealed limited applicability. Thus, it is crucial to identify new minimally invasive biomarkers for PCa.

Precision medicine can improve patient management by guiding therapeutic decision based on molecular characteristics. The concept has been extensively addressed through the application of -omics based approaches.

Prostate Cancer (PCa) represents the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) serum testing, currently used for PCa screening, lacks the necessary sensitivity and specificity.

Accurate identification of prostate cancer in frozen sections at the time of surgery can be challenging, limiting the surgeon's ability to best determine resection margins during prostatectomy. We performed desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry imaging (DESI-MSI) on 54 banked human cancerous and normal prostate tissue specimens to investigate the spatial distribution of a wide variety of small metabolites, carbohydrates, and lipids.

Dihydrotesterone (DHT) and testosterone are thought to be major contributors of prostate cancer progression and resistance. We studied the modulation of 15 circulating steroids by castration and their association with DHT and testosterone levels.

Occurrences of high values in patients with benign prostate disease and low values in patients with highly suspicious cancer have diminished the trustworthiness of prostate-specific antigen as an early diagnostic marker of prostate cancer.

Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide with research efforts dramatically improving understanding of the biology of the disease.  To investigate the role of the immune system in treatment-naïve clear cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (ccRCC), we interrogated the immune infiltrate in patient-matched ccRCC tumor samples, benign normal adjacent tissue (NAT) and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs isolated from whole blood, focusing our attention on the myeloid cell infiltrate.

Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) is the most frequent form of kidney cancer and approximately 80% of cases are defined as clear cell RCC (ccRCC). Among the histopathological factors, tumour grade represents one of the most important parameters to evaluate ccRCC progression.

Prostate cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer in men. Metabolomics can potentially provide new insights into the aetiology of prostate cancer by identifying new metabolic risk factors.

Exosomes have recently appeared as a novel source of non-invasive cancer biomarkers since tumour-specific molecules can be found in exosomes isolated from biological fluids. We have here investigated the proteome of urinary exosomes by using mass spectrometry to identify proteins differentially expressed in prostate cancer patients compared to healthy male controls.

Phosphoproteomic analysis of tumor samples has the potential to uncover significant insights into kinase signaling networks present in late stage prostate cancer that are complementary to genomic and transcriptomic approaches.

Prostate cancer is a highly prevalent tumor affecting millions of men world-wide, but poor understanding of its pathogenesis has limited effective clinical management of patients. In addition to transcriptional profiling or transcriptomics, metabolomics is being increasingly utilized to discover key molecular changes underlying tumorigenesis.

Main problems of kidney stone disease are its increasing prevalence and high recurrence rate after calculi removal in almost all areas around the globe. Despite enormous efforts in the past, its pathogenic mechanisms remain unclear and need further elucidations.

Male infertility has been recognized as a global health problem. Semen analysis, although considered the golden standard, may not provide a confident male infertility diagnosis alone. Hence, there is the urgent request for an innovative and reliable platform to detect biomarkers of infertility.

Urothelial carcinoma is the most common form of bladder cancer, but pathway changes that occur with stage-wise progression have not been well defined. We used a metabolomics approach to identify potential metabolic pathways uniquely altered in normal urothelium, nonmuscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), and muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC).

In clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), activation of hypoxic signaling induces NADH dehydrogenase (ubiquinone) 1 alpha subcomplex, 4-like 2 (NDUFA4L2) expression. Over 90% of ccRCCs exhibit overexpression of NDUFA4L2, which we previously showed contributes to ccRCC proliferation and survival.

Our aim was to define seminal plasma proteome signatures of infertile patients categorized according to their seminal parameters using TMT-LC-MS/MS. To that extent, quantitative proteomic data was analyzed following two complementary strategies: (i) the conventional approach based on standard statistical analyses of relative protein quantification values; and (ii) a novel strategy focused on establishing stable-protein pairs.

Little is known about how pre-diagnostic metabolites in blood relate to risk of prostate cancer. We aimed to investigate the prospective association between plasma metabolite concentrations and risk of prostate cancer overall, and by time to diagnosis and tumour characteristics, and risk of death from prostate cancer.

Adrenal 11-oxygenated androgens may support cancer progression in men with prostate cancer (PCa) owing to their abundance and androgenic potential. We hypothesized that preoperative circulating levels of 11-oxygenated androgens influence clinical outcomes in men with newly diagnosed localized PCa.

In the developed world, prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosis in men. Although prostate cancer initially presents as a non life-threatening disease, 90% of patients will develop castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), which preludes distant metastasis and is largely accountable for prostate cancer associated deaths.

To better understand the molecular basis of cancer, the NCI's Clinical Proteomics Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) has been performing comprehensive large-scale proteogenomic characterizations of multiple cancer types.

The clinical and fundamental research in prostate cancer - the most common urological cancer in men - is currently entering the proteomic and genomic era. The focus has switched from one single marker (PSA) to panels of biomarkers (including proteins involved in ribosomal function and heat shock proteins).

Advanced testicular germ cell tumours (GCT) generally have a good prognosis owing to their unique sensitivity towards cisplatin-based chemotherapies. However, cisplatin-resistant GCT have a poor outcome.

Male infertility is a complex condition, and for the most part, all men produce defective spermatozoa, but infertile men have a tendency to produce more. Despite attempts to classify infertility, there is no definitive test.

Nephrolithiasis/urolithiasis (i.e., kidney stone disease) remains a global public health problem with increasing incidence/prevalence. The most common chemical composition of kidney stones is calcium oxalate that initiates stone formation by crystallization, crystal growth, crystal aggregation, crystal-cell adhesion, and crystal invasion through extracellular matrix in renal interstitium.

Proteomic methodologies offer a robust approach to identify and quantify thousands of proteins from semen components in both fertile donors and infertile patients. These strategies provide an unprecedented discovery potential, which many research teams are currently exploiting.

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancer among men in the western societies. Many PCa patients bear tumors that will not threat their lives if left untreated or if treatment is delayed.

Seminal plasma (SP) mirrors the local pathophysiology of the male reproductive system and represents a non-invasive fluid for the study of infertility. Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization-Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) provides a high-throughput platform to rapidly extrapolate the diagnostic profiles of information-rich patterns.

Male infertility occurs approximately in about 50% of all infertility cases and represents a serious concern worldwide. Traditional semen analysis alone is insufficient to diagnose male infertility.

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a very aggressive and often fatal heterogeneous disease that is usually asymptomatic until late in the disease. There is an urgent need for RCC specific biomarkers that may be exploited clinically for diagnostic and prognostic purposes.

Bladder cancer constitutes the ninth most common cancer worldwide and, despite continuous development of new diagnostic approaches, the thirteenth leading cause of global cancer mortality. In our previous untargeted urine metabolomic investigation, seventeen metabolites were found to be statistically differentiating bladder cancer patients and healthy volunteers.

The androgen milieu and sexual desire in women seem to be tightly linked because they both decline with age. However, we are still missing a cut-off plasma level for androgens (total testosterone, free testosterone) or androgen precursors (androstenedione, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and DHEA sulfate (DHEAS)) to diagnose androgen deficiency in clinical practice.

The study of male infertility after spinal cord injury (SCI) has enhanced the understanding of seminal plasma (SP) as an important regulator of spermatozoa function. However, the most important factors leading to the diminished sperm motility and viability observed in semen of men with SCI remained unknown.

To investigate the association between nocturia and urinary metabolites in elderly men using metabolomic analysis.

We recruited 66 men aged 65-80 years. The 3-day frequency volume chart (FCV), International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), and quality of life score were used to assess micturition behavior.