Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men; specifically one in six men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. The use of serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels has been recognized as a huge step forward in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, however since its implementation as a biomarker it has become apparent that the numbers of deaths from prostate cancer has only decreased slightly.

Therefore the identification of new biomarkers and treatments for highly invasive/metastatic prostate cancers is of a high priority. Almac sought to identify new biomarkers and drug targets by performing DNA microarray analysis of high Gleason score prostate tumor samples and normal prostate tissue samples. To further these goals we developed a specific array platform, this array was based upon extensive sequencing of prostate tumor samples and contains approximately 90,000 probesets, many of which are specific to prostate cancer.