BERKELEY, CA (UroToday.com) - Prostate cancer is the most common cancer and second leading cause of cancer death in Western men. The prevalence of prostate cancer in Asian countries is less than one-tenth of that in Western countries, indicating the differential presentation of risk factors and/or molecular pathways in prostate cancer development in those different populations. The genetic alterations in prostate cancer cells from Western populations are well studied, but data from Asian samples are limited. We previously analyzed the genomic alterations in Chinese (low-incidence) and UK prostate cancer with Affymetrix SNP Array 6.0 high-density microarrays and found specific genomic differences between these two populations, including TMPRSS2:ERG fusion, which is detected in more than half of UK prostate cancer samples, but at a much lower frequency in Chinese prostate cancer. Following our previous observation, we further show in this study that the difference of ERG rearrangement frequency between Western and Chinese prostate cancer occurs in the precursor lesion, and this is associated with ERG protein expression difference between UK and Chinese prostate cancers -- also as early as from the precursor lesion stage.
Our data from this study provide further evidence that different pathways of prostate carcinogenesis exist in Western and Chinese populations, and the high frequent activation of ERG in prostate cells in the Western men may partially explain the higher frequency of prostate cancer in the Western vs Chinese populations. While there is ongoing development aiming to use ERG genomic rearrangement status, or ERG protein level determined by immunohistochemistry, to assist prostate cancer diagnoses, this study highlights the potential to use ERG genomic or protein-expression status to identify individuals with pre-cancer condition for their route in cancer development and to develop cancer prevention approaches specific for this group of patients. As this study demonstrated the different frequency of ERG abnormalities between Chinese and Western populations, it also helps to define the risk populations suitable for this screen test.
Due to the limitation in the number of samples used in this study, further studies are clearly required to refine the potential of the above applications.
Written by:
Liyan Xue, MD, PhDa, b and Yong-Jie Lu, MD, PhDa as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com. This initiative offers a method of publishing for the professional urology community. Authors are given an opportunity to expand on the circumstances, limitations etc... of their research by referencing the published abstract.
aCentre for Molecular Oncology, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, UK
bDepartment of Pathology, Cancer Hospital (Institute), Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
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