PurposeClinicopathologic features and biochemical recurrence are sensitive, but not specific, predictors of metastatic disease and lethal prostate cancer. We hypothesize that a genomic expression signature detected in the primary tumor represents true biological potential of aggressive disease and provides improved prediction of early prostate cancer metastasis.MethodsA nested case-control design was used to select 639 patients from the Mayo Clinic tumor registry who underwent radical prostatectomy between 1987 and 2001. A genomic classifier (GC) was developed by modeling differential RNA expression using 1.4 million feature high-density expression arrays of men enriched for rising PSA after prostatectomy, including 213 who experienced early clinical metastasis after biochemical recurrence. A training set was used to develop a random forest classifier of 22 markers to predict for cases - men with early clinical metastasis after rising PSA. Performance of GC was compared to prognostic factors such as Gleason score and previous gene expression signatures in a withheld validation set.ResultsExpression profiles were generated from 545 unique patient samples, with median follow-up of 16.9 years. GC achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.75 (0.67–0.83) in validation, outperforming clinical variables and gene signatures. GC was the only significant prognostic factor in multivariable analyses. Within Gleason score groups, cases with high GC scores experienced earlier death from prostate cancer and reduced overall survival. The markers in the classifier were found to be associated with a number of key biological processes in prostate cancer metastatic disease progression.ConclusionA genomic classifier was developed and validated in a large patient cohort enriched with prostate cancer metastasis patients and a rising PSA that went on to experience metastatic disease. This early metastasis prediction model based on genomic expression in the primary tumor may be useful for identification of aggressive prostate cancer.

Different molecular subtypes can be identified in muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Although cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy improves patient outcomes, we identified that the benefit is highest in patients with basal tumors. Our newly discovered classifier can identify these molecular subtypes in a single patient and could be integrated into routine clinical practice after further validation.

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The androgen receptor (AR) plays a central role in establishing an oncogenic cascade that drives prostate cancer progression. Some prostate cancers escape androgen dependence and are often associated with aggressive phenotype. The estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) is expressed in prostate cancers, independent of AR status. However, the role of ERα remains elusive. Using a combination of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and RNA-sequencing data, we identified an ERα specific non coding transcriptome signature. Amongst putatively ERα-regulated intergenic long non coding RNAs (lncRNAs), we identified Nuclear Enriched Abundant Transcript 1 (NEAT1) as the most significantly overexpressed lncRNA in prostate cancer. Analysis of two large clinical cohorts also revealed that NEAT1 expression is associated with prostate cancer progression. Prostate cancer cells expressing high levels of NEAT1 were recalcitrant to androgen or AR antagonists. Finally, we provide evidence that NEAT1 drives oncogenic growth by altering the epigenetic landscape of target gene promoters to favor transcription.

Increased expression of the transcription/translation regulatory protein Y-box binding protein-1 (YB-1) is associated with cancer aggressiveness, particularly in breast carcinoma. Here we establish that YB-1 levels are elevated in invasive breast cancer cells and correlate with reduced expression of E-cadherin and poor patient survival. Enforced expression of YB-1 in noninvasive breast epithelial cells induced an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) accompanied by enhanced metastatic potential and reduced proliferation rates. YB-1 directly activates cap-independent translation of messenger RNAs encoding Snail1 and other transcription factors implicated in downregulation of epithelial and growth-related genes and activation of mesenchymal genes. Hence, translational regulation by YB-1 is a restriction point enabling coordinated expression of a network of EMT-inducing transcription factors, likely acting together to promote metastatic spread.