Serum metabolites with diagnostic potential in prostate cancer and the inhibitory effects of alpha-Tocomonoenol on prostate cancer cells

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Introduction: Prostate cancer is the most common malignant disease of the male urinary system, seriously endangering men's health. Currently, early detection of prostate cancer mainly relies on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening; however, PSA is characterized by high sensitivity but low specificity. Patients with PSA levels in the gray zone (4-10ng/ml) are at risk of excessive medical interventions, highlighting the great significance of exploring new diagnostic indicators for prostate cancer. Methods: A total of 60 subjects were enrolled in this study, including 30 prostate cancer patients and 30 benign prostatic hyperplasia patients. Non-targeted metabolomics analysis was performed on the subjects, and the profiling results were statistically analyzed. A diagnostic model was constructed using stepwise regression, and experimental verification was conducted on alpha-Tocomonoenol, one of the key differential metabolites. Additionally, the effect of alpha-Tocomonoenol on cell proliferation was evaluated in LNCaP, 22Rv1, and RWPE-1 cells. Results: Six differential metabolites between the prostate cancer group and the benign prostatic hyperplasia group were used to construct a diagnostic model, which showed a high area under the curve (AUC = 0.9433). Experimental verification revealed that alpha-Tocomonoenol inhibited the proliferation of LNCaP and 22Rv1 cells by binding to androgen receptors, while it had no significant effect on the proliferation of RWPE-1 cells. Discussion: This study demonstrates that serum metabolites have the potential to serve as diagnostic biomarkers for the early detection of prostate cancer. Furthermore, alpha-Tocomonoenol might exert an anti-proliferative effect on prostate cancer cells through binding to androgen receptors, providing new insights into the development of novel diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies for prostate cancer.