Previous studies indicate that prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3) is highly expressed in prostatic tumors. However, its clinical value has not been characterized. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical value of the urine PCA3 test in the diagnosis of prostate cancer by pooling the published data. Clinical trials utilizing the urine PCA3 test for diagnosing prostate cancer were retrieved from PubMed and Embase. A total of 46 clinical trials including 12,295 subjects were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (+LR), negative likelihood ratio (−LR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and area under the curve (AUC) were 0.65 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.63–0.66), 0.73 (95% CI: 0.72–0.74), 2.23 (95% CI: 1.91–2.62), 0.48 (95% CI: 0.44–0.52), 5.31 (95% CI: 4.19–6.73) and 0.75 (95% CI: 0.74–0.77), respectively. In conclusion, the urine PCA3 test has acceptable sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of prostate cancer and can be used as a non-invasive method for that purpose.

Previous studies indicated a role of hepatocellular carcinoma-related protein-1(HCRP-1) in human cancers, however, its expression pattern in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and the molecular mechanism of HCRP-1 on cancer progression have not been characterized. In the present study, HCRP-1 expression was examined in a RCC tissue microarray. The negative expression of HCRP-1 was significantly correlated with tumor grade (P = 0.002), TNM stage (P = 0.001) and pT status (P = 0.003). Furthermore, we showed a strong correlation between negative HCRP-1 expression and worse overall and disease-specific survival (P = 0.0003 and P = 0.0012, respectively). Knockdown of HCRP-1 promoted cell migration and invasion in 786-O and OS-RC-2 cell lines. HCRP-1 depletion increased matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 protein level, with increased extracellular signal-regulatedkinase (ERK) phosphorylation, which could be reversed by ERK siRNA or ERK inhibitor, PD98059. Further analysis showed that HCRP-1 knockdown induced epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) phosphorylation. Treatment with EGFR inhibitor or EGFR siRNA blocked HCRP-1-mediated up-regulation of EGFR, ERK phosphorylation and MMP-2 expression. In summary, our results showed that negative HCRP-1 expression is an independent prognostic factor for RCC patients and promotes migration and invasion by EGFR-ERK-mediated up-regulation of MMP-2. HCRP-1 may serve as a therapeutic target for RCC.

Sperm-associated antigen 9 (SPAG9) is a recently characterized oncoprotein involved in the progression of several human malignancies. To elucidate the role of SPAG9 in the development of human prostate cancer (PCa), tissue microarray (TMA) and immunohistochemistry were used to detect the clinical relevance of SPAG9 in PCa tissues. We found that SPAG9 expression was increased in the PCa tissues when compared with the level in the tumor adjacent normal prostate tissues, and increased SPAG9 staining was significantly correlated with TNM stage and tumor grade. We also examined prostate cancer cell motility, invasion and angiogenesis ability following reduced SPAG9 expression by siRNA. Our data showed that knockdown of SPAG9 in prostate cancer cell lines inhibited cell motility and invasion due to the inactivation of metalloproteinase-2 (MMP‑2)/MMP-9 by upregulation of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1)/TIMP-2. Furthermore, downregulation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) secretion greatly contributed to the reduced ability of angiogenesis. Our data indicate that SPAG9 expression is significantly increased in PCa and it may be involved in the process of prostate cancer cell motility, migration and angiogenesis.