Combined Urinary Prostate Cancer Risk Score Based on Levels of PCAT14, PCA3, SChLAP1, and TMPRSS2: ERG Biomarkers Detected Using Resistive Sensors

Abstract

Prostate cancer is a common age-related malignancy among men, originating in the prostate epithelium, often asymptomatic in early stages. The first line of diagnosis, serum prostate-specific antigen evaluations, suffers from low specificity and sensitivity, leading to false positives and missed clinically significant cases. These limitations often result in incorrect diagnosis, unnecessary biopsies, and difficulty in distinguishing aggressive tumors from indolent disease. In this work, four better biomarkers of prostate cancer, PCAT14, PCA3, SChLAP1, and TMPRSS2: ERG were tested in clinical urine samples collected from patients with benign and malignant conditions, using four different resistive sensors developed for their detection. The observations of the sensors were validated with semiquantitative polymerase chain reaction. The sensors responses were combined to generate a combined urinary prostate score (CUPS), aiming to differentiate benign and malignant forms of the disease. A receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed using the CUPS of 32 urine samples. The cutoff value is determined to be 6.05, above which, it is cancer; otherwise, it is a benign case.