Conventional and Promising Biomarkers for Prostate Cancer their Clinical Implication and Prospective Role

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most common cancer in men and most common causes of male cancerrelated deaths. Over many years, biomarkers have been extensively studied for screening, diagnosis, prediction of (PCa) behavior and outcome and for assigning the patients during treatments. Molecular biomarkers could also help scientists to attain better understanding for the molecular basis of the disease and prediction of the patient response to therapies. Early detection of PCa was made possible about 30 years ago by the introduction of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in the clinical practice. However, PCa screening remains controversial, because of the risk of over diagnosis and/or over treatment and the inability to detect a significant proportion of advanced tumors. Several novel biomarkers have shown promises in preliminary studies. This review will focus on traditional biomarkers approved by FDA as PSA, PSA isoforms, Prostate health index (phi) and prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3), also novel and promising PCa biomarkers as Prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA) and Urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA), emphasizing on their molecular and biochemical basis, clinical implication and prospective role.