Applicability and Utility of the PHEMI Secure Clinical and Multiomics Platform for Precision Medicine

Advanced prostate cancer (PCa) manifests as metastasis and metastasis is the leading cause of death for PCa patients. The underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. We hypothesize germline variants may modulate a tumor’s propensity for metastasis. If validated a saliva or blood based test could be developed to predict risk of metastasis. Our objectives are: (1) identify a cohort of high-grade treatment naïve prostate tumors half that metastasized and half that did not following prostatectomy. The cohort of 50 tumors will have a minimum follow-up of 8 years. (2) perform DNA sequencing on the tumor DNA and adjacent normal tissue (germline). (3) identify the proteins expressed in the tumor and adjacent normal tissue. (4) employ computational tools to identify candidate germline and tumour drivers of metastasis. (5) link these to differences in the proteome of the tumor and the tumor microenvironment between non metastatic and metastatic tumors. (6) validate differentially expressed proteins using immunohistochemistry on tumor microarrays and databases. Germline, somatic or proteomic signatures of metastasis will be validated in large independent cohorts. Data security and sharing will be piloted using PHEMI software installed on servers at the VPC.

Faculty Supervisor:

Colin Collins

Student:

Yen-Yi Lin

Partner:

PHEMI Systems

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

University:

University of British Columbia

Program: