1. ¹Department of Urology, Kitasato University School of Medicine, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan
2. ²Department of Physics, Kitasato University School of Science, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan

Correspondence: S Egawa, Department of Urology, Kitasato University School of Medicine, 1-15-1 Kitasato, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 228-8555, Japan. E-mail: s-egpro@jcom.home.ne.jp

Received 8 March 2004; Revised 22 April 2004; Accepted 9 June 2004; Published online 12 October 2004.

Abstract

In this paper, we briefly review cancer proteomics in general, with particular attention to our proteome analyses of prostate cancer. Our efforts include development of new tools and novel approaches to discovering proteins potentially useful as cancer diagnostic and/or prognostic biomarkers or as therapeutic targets. To this end, we analyzed prostate cancer proteomes using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis employing agarose gels for the initial isoelectric focusing step (agarose 2-DE), with mass spectrometry used for protein identification. Agarose 2-DE offers advantages over the more widely used immobilized pH gradient 2-DE for separating high molecular mass proteins (15–500 kDa), thereby increasing its power to detect changes in the cancer's high-molecular mass proteomes.