Prostate cancer is one of the major problems of men's health. It has more obvious cancer heterogeneity, affecting the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis monitoring when comparing with other cancer. Thus, cancer related biomarkers are urgently needed to guide biopsy, treatment selection and follow-up. In the aspect of diagnosis, though the emerging of prostate specific antigen can raise the rate of diagnosis to some extent, it brings more unnecessary biopsies because of its low specificity. Cancer related long non-coding RNAs, single nucleotide polymorphism and fusion genes are proved to increase the diagnostic efficiency through high-throughput sequencing techniques. In the aspect of molecular classification, traditional Gleason score can discriminate different risk level of the cancer, but it is limited by the technicians. It is reported that copy number variations from DNA level and small RNAs, long non-coding RNAs from RNA level are related with the progress of cancer, indicating the potential role in cancer molecular classification. Although we are still on the way of the initial stage in exploring prostate cancer biomarkers, more useful and promising biomarkers will be found by high-throughput sequencing and molecular biotechniques.
Biomarkers, Tumor ; analysis ; Biopsy ; DNA Copy Number Variations ; Humans ; Male ; Prognosis ; Prostate-Specific Antigen ; Prostatic Neoplasms ; diagnosis ; therapy ; Sensitivity and Specificity