Abstract B34: Can profiles of early-stage prostate cancer provide clues to prostate cancer prognosis?

There are three generally accepted treatments available for early stage prostate cancer, Radical prostatectomy, radiation therapy or Active surveillance (also known as watchful waiting). Because the first two choices have secondary side effects and negative implications for patient quality-of-life, some patients elect watchful waiting as a treatment regimen. The dilemma with electing watchful waiting as a treatment option is that the tumor under surveillance could have metastatic potential. For men of African descent, the dilemma of watchful waiting could have even more severe outcomes, since it is known that African Americans have twice the risk of developing distant prostate cancer disease and twice the mortality relative to Caucasian American males. To date there are no biomarkers that can predict whether or not an early stage tumor is metastatic. One possible approach to finding biomarkers is to profile early stage prostate cancers tissues relative to non- tumor prostate tissues. The purpose of this study was to mine microarray data, uncover differentially expressed genes in early stage PCa, (Gleason score 3+3) and map them to candidate gene ontology terms and pathways. Several clear patterns of gene expression were discovered which correlated with genes involved in positive regulation of gene expression epigenetics, interleukin 4, 10 and 13 production, progesterone receptor signaling pathway and chromatin-mediated maintenance of transcription. The potential of these genes to serve as predictors of prostate cancer prognosis will be discussed. The limitation of this study is the low number of prostate samples used.