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Biotech / Medical : Ciphergen Biosystems(CIPH): -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tuck who wrote (121)	5/27/2003 11:30:08 AM
From: tuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 510

However, this abstract from the same team concerning prostate cancer does mention an ABI mass spec and ProteinChips, implying that the interface is being used (in conjunction with with BioMek front end recently introduced to automate the sample preparation): >>Serum proteomic patterns generated by high resolution mass spectroscopy can discriminate prostate cancer from benign states among men with elevated PSA levels Vincent A. Fusaro, Thomas P. Conrads, Sally J. Ross, Ben A. Hitt, Wesley W. Wiggins, Gordon Whiteley, Timothy D. Veenstra, Lance Liotta, Emanuel F. Petricoin III, David K. Ornstein, NCI/NIH, Bethesda, MD; NCI at Frederick, Frederick, MD; Correlogic Systems, Inc., Bethesda, MD; FDA-NCI, Bethesda, MD; The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Artificial intelligence based pattern recognition algorithms have been developed and successfully used to analyze complex serum proteomic data streams generated by surface enhanced laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectroscopy (SELDI-TOF). We have previously shown that analysis of serum protein profiles by this novel approach can discriminate men with prostate cancer (CaP) from those with benign prostates (Petricoin et. al., JNCI 2002). In this current study we extend our analysis through use of a high performance hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer coupled with serum proteomic pattern diagnostics to determine the need for prostate biopsies among men with elevated PSA levels. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Serum samples were collected from 176 men with serum PSA levels of 2.5 - 15.0 ng/ml prior to TRUS/Bx. Serum samples were applied to WCX2 Protein Arrays (Ciphergen Biosystems, Fremont, CA) by a Biomek 2000 robotic liquid handler (Beckman Coulter, Inc.) liquid robotic handler and low molecular weight (< 12 kd) proteomic patterns were generated with the ABI QSTAR Pulsar LC/MS/MS System (Applied Biosystems Inc). The proteomic patterns were analyzed with a bioinformatics tool, Proteome Quest beta version 1.0 (Correlogic Systems Inc., Bethesda, MD). Serum samples from 40 men (14 with 2 or more negative prostate biopsies, and 26 with biopsy detected CaP) were used to "train" the diagnostic algorithm and the remaining 136 samples (that included 35 with prostate cancer and 83 with 1 negative biopsy session and 18 with 2 or more negative biopsy sessions) were analyzed in a blinded fashion. RESULTS: Testing of the remaining 136 men yielded an overall sensitivity of 97.1% and specificity of 55%. The specificity among men who had undergone 2 or more negative biopsies was 83%. If the proteomic pattern had been used to determine the need for prostate biopsy in this cohort of men with PSA levels in the diagnostic grey zone, 55% (46/83) of men with negative biopsies would have avoided an unnecessary biopsy while only 1 of 35 (3%) of the cancers would have been missed. CONCLUSIONS: Our data demonstrates that high resolution mass spectroscopy can generate serum proteomic patterns that discriminate men with elevated PSA levels due to benign processes from those men with CaP even when the PSA level is within the diagnostic grey zone. We are currently expanding the testing set to determine the reliability of this new technology to reduce unnecessary prostate biopsies without compromising detection of curable CaP. << Cheers, Tuck