Study the Role of MBD2 in the Metastasis Mechanism of Prostate Cancer and Clinical Diagnostics Applications

Prostate cancer, the 1st position in male genitourinary tract organs, is the seventh leading cause of male cancer death in Taiwan (2013) and usually occurs in men over age 50. The risk factors for prostate cancer are age, family history and race. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing is regarded as an early indicator for prostate cancer. However, because of the limitation of PSA detection, this method is not reliable for the detection of early stage prostate cancer. Therefore, it is important to find more sensitive and specific biomarkers that could help the diagnosis of early stage prostate cancer. Many studies mentioned that aberrant DNA methylation associated with cancers. Methyl-CpG binding domain protein 2 (MBD2) is a member of MBD family which could recognize and bind to methylated DNA CpG sites that result in DNA methylation-related transcriptional repression. In this project, we aim to investigate the role of MBD2 in prostate cancer metastasis and find new biomarkers to detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) for clinical use. According to our previous results, we had generated a MBD2 knockdown prostate cancer cell line by using RNAi technique and compared the gene expression levels by expression microarray. From these results, we will focus on the genes that with high expression level and cancer metastasis associated genes to validate the role of MBD2 and the possible downstream signaling in prostate cancer. In our previously study, biglycan gene expression correlates of cancer gleason score. We also collected peripheral venous blood samples from benign and prostate cancer patients to test CTCs in GRC chip coated with EpCAM antibody. Although the preliminary results showed that we could detect CTCs from peripheral blood, we still need to improve the efficiency of the GRC (Genomic research center) chip. Based on this study, we could get more understanding of the tumor pathogenesis in prostate cancer and provide a novel way for clinical diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Project ID:PC10408-2130
External Project ID:MOST104-2314-B182-038