Identification and Evaluation of biomarkers to detect bladder cancer

Urinary Bladder Cancer (UBC) is the 5th most common cancer in the West. Continuous efforts have been made to develop non-invasive urine-based biomarkers with high sensitivity and specificity that would improve patients¿ quality of life, costs and lower the number of cystoscopies. This can then be utilized as part of a multi-biomarker panel to develop a urine test for UBC diagnosis as a single marker is unable to replace current diagnostic invasive tools. Using a (LC-MS/MS) proteomic approach, 8 UBC and 1 normal bladder cell secretomes were analysed to identify secreted proteins that can be potential candidate biomarkers. phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA; PKC activator was used to treat whole secretomes and investigate all proteins released by cells whereas secretomes that were treated with the broad-spectrum inhibitor, Marimastat underwent ultracentrifugation to focus on proteins being shedded. Protein quantification was based upon stable isotope labelling by peptide demethylation. Two methods were utilized to select candidate biomarkers: Human Protein Atlas and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis. EpCAM biology was also examined to see the effects of PMA and Marimastat on its ectodomain.