Tissue proteomics studies in the investigation of prostate cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the leading causes of death in the male population worldwide. Various clinical samples such as urine, blood serum, and prostatic fluid have been commonly used for the identification of PCa-associated molecular changes. Tissue, the site of oncogenesis, is increasingly gaining more attention as a study material for studies aimed at the discovery of biomarkers for predicting the disease outcome and therapeutic targets. Areas covered: This review is the output of a systematic literature search on PubMed to retrieve articles relevant to the proteomic analysis of tissues for the study of PCa. Studies performed during the last 10 years using human tissues are summarized. Expert commentary: Multiple proteomics studies were performed in the past 10 years focusing on PCa initial diagnosis and staging. Even though some reproducible findings have been reported, many studies lacked adequate validation of findings and relied on relatively lower-resolution proteomics techniques compared to the current state of the art. Incorporation of high-resolution proteomics techniques, including investigations of protein post-translational modifications (PTMs), is expected in the near future to complement other -omics and enhance current efforts toward the molecular subtyping of PCa for patient stratification.