There is evidence of substantial overdiagnosis and overtreatment associated with the current use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) based prostate cancer (PC) screening. Nevertheless, 20-25% of patients experience biochemical recurrence after only five years after treatment, i.e. have clinically significant, potentially life threatening disease. Identification of patients at high-risk of prostate cancer with unfavorable features at the time of diagnosis would be important, since this category of men are likely to benefit most from intent-to-cure therapy combined with adjuvant therapies. Currently, the conventional measurements of total PSA remain the only widely used serum markers for PC in the clinic. Although being sensitive, its specificity and predictive value is limited.

The group aims to identify novel biomarkers for early diagnosis and monitoring of clinically significant PC. This involves testing and validating a kallikrein panel for detection of PC, and improving the utility of serum biomarkers by combining genotypic data to risk predictions. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNA) are tested and validated as biomarkers. Another main focus is on discovering and validating means to detect circulating tumour cells (CTC), which includes evaluation and improvement of existing methods to detect and enrich CTCs, profiling CTC and testing ncRNA for detecting CTC.

Current sources of External funding:

Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), Pirkanmaa Hospital District Laboratory Center, OrionPharma Ltd