The RT-PCR reaction was performed with an OneStep RT-PCR kit (Qiagen) essentially following the manufacturer's protocol, except that the final reaction volume was scaled down to 20 ml. The forward (GTT TCC CAG TCA CGA TCC AGG AGG CGG AGG CGG A) and reverse primers (GTT TCC CAG TCA CGA TCG GCG TTG TAG CTG GGG GTG AG) are located at exon 6 of ERG and exon 1 of TMPRSS2 respectively, as described (2, 9) . The 5 0 -ends of both primers have the sequence of primer B (GTT TCC CAG TCA CGA TC) for the subsequent step of PCR labeling with a single primer B as described previously (25) .