Overview
Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.
After skin cancers, prostate cancer is the most frequently occurring cancer in Australian males and is the second most common cause of cancer death. The complex array of small metabolites present in biological fluids is potentially a rich source of information about metabolic regulation and its response to disease and the environment. The changing profiles in biological fluid composition accompanying disease provide a prospective tool for detecting the presence and extent of a disease. Accurately assessing the progression and extent of prostate cancer is not readily performed non-invasively and measuring the metabolite profile of seminal fluid may assist in the staging of the disease.
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is a technique that produces signals from small molecules in solution. Until recently, the complexity of spectra recorded from biofluids has made analysis by NMR extremely difficult. However, the application of statistical techniques such as principal components analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), enabled by specialized software packages, has provided a method to extract valuable information from complex NMR spectra of biofluids and tissue extracts.
Methods and techniques that will be developed in the course of this project: In this project, you will learn to use the 400 MHz spectrometer recently installed at QUT to record NMR spectra from samples previously collected from subjects with prostate cancer. You will analyse the data and identify metabolite "fingerprints" of these samples using metabonomic techniques. By correlating these data with demographic and physiological data, you will determine which metabolites are associated with the disease and the extent to which metabolite distribution is influenced by the stage of the disease.
- Study level
- Honours
- Supervisors
- QUT
- Organisational unit
Faculty of Science and Technology
- Research area
- Contact
- Please contact the supervisor.
Dr Mark Wellard
Associate Professor Terry Walsh
