The purpose of this study was to first investigate the expression of seven different PC-related RNAs that included serine 2 (TMPRSS2): erythroblastosis virus E26 oncogene homolog (ERG) gene (TMPRSS2-ERG, T2E) fusion, alpha-methylacyl-CoA racemase (AMACR), kallikrein related peptidase 3 (KLK3), androgen receptor (AR), prostate cancer specific antigen 3 (PCA3), and matrix metalloproteinases (MMP)-2 and 9.
Retrospective case-control study.In 129 PCa patients who underwent ultrasound-guided needle prostate biopsy and subsequent radical prostatectomy from 1987 to 1999 at the University Hospital of Careggi, we evaluated: (1) mRNA expression of the serine 2 (TMPRSS2): erythroblastosis virus E26 oncogene homolog (ERG); (2) expression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMP)-2 and 9 (epithelial and stromal); (3) expression of androgen receptor; (4) expression of prognostic marker Ki67 (MIB1); (5) presence and typing of human papilloma virus; (6) DNA methylation of CpG islands of several genes involved in PCa progression.
We went on to evaluate the performance of this signature against three individual markers of prostate cancer, v-ets avian erythroblastosis virus E26 oncogene homolog (ERG) expression, prostate specific antigen (PSA) expression and androgen receptor (AR) expression in an additional independent dataset.