Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, and Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Canada.
Expression profiling studies using microarrays and other methods have shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) are dysregulated in a wide variety of human cancers. The up-regulation of miR-221 has been reported in carcinomas of the pancreas, breast, and papillary thyroid, as well as in glioblastoma and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. In prostate cancer, however, down-regulation of miR-221 has been repeatedly confirmed in miRNA expression studies. Also unique to prostate cancer, and found in more than 50% of patients, is the aberrant expression of a known oncogene, the TMPRSS2:ERG fusion. To date, there has been no published study describing miRNA associations in prostate tumours that overexpress the ERG oncogene from the TMPRSS2:ERG fusion transcript. Herein we report that in a large and diverse cohort of prostate carcinoma samples, miR-221 is down-regulated in patients with tumours bearing TMPRSS2:ERG fusion transcripts, thus providing a link between miRNA and gene fusion expression.
Written by:
Gordanpour A, Stanimirovic A, Nam RK, Moreno CS, Sherman C, Sugar L, Seth A.
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Reference: Anticancer Res. 2011 Feb;31(2):403-10.
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 21378318
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