Tumor Markers in Early Detection and Monitoring of Prostate Cancer: Recent Advances

Due to the fact that the use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in prostate cancer (PC) management is limited, the search for novel biomarkers useful for early detection and monitoring, especially from noninvasive biofluids is an important pursuit. Urine has become one of the most attractive biofluids in clinical practice. Although none of the novel biomarkers to date have been used in common everyday clinical practice, they may bestow a strategy to resolve the dilemma of early detection and monitoring of PC. Diagnostic and monitoring biomarkers may be assessed as standalone tests or be merged, and consequently used as risk stratification tools for detection and management of PC. Novel biomarkers, classified as urine, blood or tissue-based, may represent a component of new risk calculators and can be computed independently or merged with data obtained from imaging procedures. On the other hand, novel techniques in the field of omics, exsosomal science and nanomedicine represent a new kind of intervention biomarker identification and application. The future path of biomarker discovery will rely on the active collaboration among clinics and laboratories in defining the standards and establishing guidelines in order to facilitate the discoveries by providing a framework for specimen collection, processing, analysis, significance and data reduction.