issn 1652-4063
isbn 978-91-7668-888-5 Örebro Studies in Medicine 74örebro 2012
Doctoral Dissertation
Identification of miRNA expression profiles for diagnosis
and prognosis of prostate cancer
Jessica Carlsson
Medical Science with focus on Biomedicine
2012
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ÖREBRO STUDIES IN MEDIcINE 74Jessica Carlsson was born on February 17th
1984. In 2008 she received her master’s degree in Biomedicine at the University of Skövde and she was registered as a PhD student in March 2009. During this research period she has been active in the Systems Biology Research Center at the University of Skövde, both as representative of PhD students in the board of the centre and as responsible for the seminars and workshops within the research center. Jessica has also been teaching students at bachelor as well as master level in both biomedicine and bioinformatics.
Cancer of the prostate (CaP) is the most common malignancy diagnosed in men in the Western society. During the last years, the prostate specific antigen (PSA) has been used as a biomarker for prostate cancer, although a high PSA value is not specific for prostate cancer. Thus, there is an urgent need for new and improved diagnostic markers for CaP. In this thesis the aim was to identify miRNA expression signatures for diagnosis and prognosis of CaP by measuring the expression of miRNAs in both normal and malignant prostate tissues. The results in the thesis show that it is possible to classify normal and malignant prostate tissues using an expression signature of nine miRNAs, although the results also indicate that it might be necessary to use two separate expression profiles for diagnosis of tumors arising in the transition zone or in the peripheral zone of the prostate. Taken together, the results in this thesis show the importance of miRNAs in CaP and the possibility of their future use as biomarkers for prostate cancer.
