Identification of stem cell surface markers as potential therapeutic targets for advanced prostate cancer

Each year an estimated 30,000 men in the US will die of prostate cancer with most of them having progressed to an advanced state. The lack of effective treatments for advanced prostate cancer and the appearance of resistance mechanisms to current drugs underscore the need to develop new therapeutic strategies. We have shown that the most aggressive forms of advanced prostate cancer are the most stem cell-like and share molecular features with the normal human prostate stem cell. We believe that targeting traits shared between normal stem cells and advanced prostate cancer cells such as proteins found on the cell’s surface could potentially impact how we treat men living with this debilitating disease. Using a combination of single cell sequencing, computational, and functional techniques, we identified distinct cell types that reside within the normal human prostate stem cell population. We further found that these cell types expressed different cell surface markers. Analysis of large-scale datasets composed of human prostate cancer samples revealed that a number of the normal stem cell surface markers were highly expressed on the most aggressive types of human prostate cancers. In the near future, we will develop therapeutic antibodies against these normal stem cell markers with the hope of one day successfully treating men with advanced prostate cancer.