Evaluation of Prostate Cancer Metabolomic Field Effects Using Prostate Needle Biopsies

Emily Decelle¹, Yannick Berker¹, Tilman Schwessinger¹, ², Shulin Wu¹, W. Scott McDougal¹, Chin-Lee Wu¹, Leo L. Cheng¹

Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy in men worldwide. Radiological imaging is currently unable to detect suspicious areas for targeted biopsy, so randomly conducted biopsies often result in false negatives for early-stage PCa patients. Results from our previous studies of intact tissue samples from PCa patients suggested the existence of metabolic or metabolomic fields, i.e. PCa metabolic information are observed to delocalize from PCa glands and into the surrounding structures that are benign tissue according to histology. In the current study, we test the metabolomic field hypothesis by evaluating prostate biopsy cores for patients suspicious of harboring PCa.