WJBC 5^(th) Anniversary Special Issues(2): Proteomics In 2014, can we do better than CA125 in the early detection of ovarian cancer?

Ovarian cancer is a lethal gynecologic malignancy with greater than 70% of women presenting with advanced stage disease. Despite new treatments, long term outcomes have not significantly changed in the past 30 years with the five-year overall survival remaining between 20% and 40% for stage Ⅲ and Ⅳ disease. In contrast patients with stage Ⅰ disease have a greater than 90% five-year overall survival. Detection of ovarian cancer at an early stage would likely have significant impact on mortality rate. Screening biomarkers discovered at the bench have not translated to success in clinical trials. Existing screening modalities have not demonstrated survival benefit in completed prospective trials. Advances in high throughput screening are making it possible to evaluate the development of ovarian cancer in ways never before imagined. Data in the form of human "-omes" including the proteome, genome, metabolome, and transcriptome are now available in various packaged forms. With the correct pooling of resources including prospective collection of patient specimens, integration of high throughput screening, and use of molecular heterogeneity in biomarker discovery, we are poised to make progress in ovarian cancer screening. This review will summarize current biomarkers, imaging, and multimodality screening strategies in the context of emerging technologies.

Petrophysical Tutorial, Lessons Learned, and Evaluation Workflow: A Case Study in the Power River Basin

The objective is to empower the reader and scientific community with the knowledge and specific applicable equations to then reproduce the critical rock and fluid attributes in the Powder River Basin. To then continue to unravel the basin and its potential (both conventionally and unconventionally). The overall goal is to ensure the transfer of knowledge and communication of a petrophysical workflow that can then also influence application to other basins worldwide. The Powder River Basin is in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming and is a prolific oil and gas (hydrocarbon-prone) sedimentary basin related to the greater Rockies chain/series of hydrocarbon-bearing basins (ex. Big Horn, Greater Green River, Denver-Jules). In this study, we briefly set-up the geological background of the Powder River Basin and the importance/ relevance to then tackling subsurface petrophysical evaluation on a regional scale. Approximately, 200 wells were evaluated petrophysically by a combined deterministic and inversion-based workflow representing an effort to share best practices, approaches, and the relative trends to apply in the basin to unravel the stratigraphic hydrocarbon potential in place. An extensive workflow involving basic petrophysical approaches such as raw log applicable cutoffs and volume of clay determination are shared as well as extending knowledge and application into advanced petrophysics through geochemical property derivation and impact of those derived properties as well as bound versus free water and hydrocarbon understanding. Results of the petrophysical analysis highlight the varying properties in conventional and unconventional formations (example Niobrara). The results of how and why the petrophysical approach was calibrated and then applied are the primary efforts accomplished.