Abstract 1961: Discovery and validation of prostate cancer biomarkers of biochemical recurrence in low-risk prostate cancer patients
Authors: Kohaar Indu , Bejar Kaitlyn , Young Denise , Song Yingjie , Jiang Jiji , Kagan Jacob , Srivastava Sudhir , Hernandez Javier , Chesnut Gregory , Sesterhenn Isabell A. , Leach Robin J. , Petrovics Gyorgy 
Published: June 2022

Introduction: Prostate cancer (CaP) is predominantly indolent disease with a small fraction of patients undergoing metastatic progression. Therefore, it is critical to identify prognostic markers for the early detection of an aggressive subtype. We hypothesized that tissue specimens from early-stage, low risk CaP may harbor predictive prognostic signatures for disease progression after radical prostatectomy. Previously, we had systematically evaluated and optimized the NanoString platform for CaP gene expression analysis in formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) whole mounted prostate specimens. The goal of the study is to validate the CPDR findings on the differential mRNA expression of candidate markers from patients with BCR (biochemical recurrence) and non-BCR in an independent cohort.

Methods: This is a retrospective case cohort study based on 78 tumor-normal paired (N=156) archived whole mounted FFPE prostate samples received from biobank at UTHSCSA. We performed an optimized NanoString analysis of 203-CaP probe set to evaluate the association of markers with BCR outcome in a racially diverse patient population comprising of 21.6% AA and 78.38% CA men. The cohort comprised of 28 patients with BCR, and 50 patients with no BCR (based on a minimum of 5 years of follow-up). ERG gene expression was validated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) assay using CPDR ERG-MAb (9FY). Normalized nCounter gene expression data was analyzed using the NanoString nSolver (v 4.0) platform. Fisher exact and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests were used for categorical and continuous variables respectively.

Results: We found 96.1% (73/76) concordance between ERG IHC and NanoString datasets, which provides strong QC and validation for NanoString data. ERG positive tumors had strong expression of both TMPRSS2-ERG fusion and several other ERG splice forms. Additionally, the prostate epithelial cell markers PSA, MSMB and PAP had the highest signals in all samples reflecting the prostate epithelial origin of the specimens. Differential gene expression analysis showed that a total of 37 genes were found to be significantly (P adj &lt;0.05) different across tumors and normal. Established CaP genes like AMACR, PCA3, OR51E2, ERG, HOXC6, DLX1, CACNA1D and PSGR were most highly over-expressed in tumors compared to matched normal while GSTP1, CAV1, PAP and MSMB were significantly downregulated in tumors compared to adjacent normal prostate epithelia. Race stratified analysis in this randomly selected patient cohort showed that AA men were found to be significantly younger (median age: 56 years AA vs. 63 years CA; p 0.01) and had higher frequency of BCR events (p 0.004) than CA men. Data analysis for disease outcome across AA and CA men is ongoing.

Conclusions: We confirmed that NanoString approach is useful for evaluation of prognostic biomarker candidates in prostate cancer using FFPE specimens.

Citation Format: Indu Kohaar, Kaitlyn Bejar, Denise Young, Yingjie Song, Jiji Jiang, Jacob Kagan, Sudhir Srivastava, Javier Hernandez, Gregory Chesnut, Isabell A. Sesterhenn, Robin J. Leach, Gyorgy Petrovics. Discovery and validation of prostate cancer biomarkers of biochemical recurrence in low-risk prostate cancer patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 1961.