SOX9 stands for a bio-marker for prostate cancer detection

Abstract

Background Prostate cancer is one of common cancers around the world, and in our country the incidence and mortality of PCa are both increasing. More and more reports have revealed that SOX9 is involved in various human cancers. In this study, we aimed to explore the relationship between SOX9 expression and diagnostic value of PCa patients. Methods In this study, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to determine the expression of SOX9 of the 131 PCa patients and 74 healthy volunteers. And receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to determine the diagnostic value of SOX9 for PCa patients. Results The results of qRT-PCR showed that the expression of serum SOX9 in PCa patients was higher than that in healthy controls (P < 0.05). And the expression of SOX9 was significantly associated with PSA (P = 0.001), differentiation (P = 0.000), and lymph node metastasis (P = 0.000). Besides, the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.966 with the sensitivity of 93.2% and specificity of 87.8% respectively. The optimal cutoff value of SOX9 was 2.34. Conclusions Our results found that SOX9 is a novel oncogene for PCa, and may be a novel and effective biomarker for the diagnosis of patients with PCa.