Project description:<p>Prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in males throughout the world and has the largest estimated effect of heritability among the most common tumor types. Copy Number Variants (CNVs) are a recently recognized class of human germline polymorphisms (Iafrate AJ, et al. (2004) Nat Genet 36, 949-951; Sebat J, et al. (2004) Science 305, 525-528.) and are associated with a variety of human diseases, including cancer. This study characterized 1,903 individuals from the Tyrol Early Prostate Cancer Detection Program (Bartsch G, et al. (2008) BJU Int 101, 809-816) using a computational framework (Banerjee S, et al. (2011) PLoS One 29;6(3)). The study results establish non-coding and coding germline CNVs as significant risk factors for prostate cancer susceptibility and implicate their role in disease development and progression. The study "Identification of functionally active, low frequency copy number variants at 15q21.3 and 12q21.31 associated with prostate cancer risk," Demichelis F, Setlur SR, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Apr 24;109(17):6686-91.</p>
Project description:<p>Prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in males throughout the world and has the largest estimated effect of heritability among the most common tumor types. Copy Number Variants (CNVs) are a recently recognized class of human germline polymorphisms (Iafrate AJ, et al. (2004) Nat Genet 36, 949-951; Sebat J, et al. (2004) Science 305, 525-528.) and are associated with a variety of human diseases, including cancer. This study characterized 1,903 individuals from the Tyrol Early Prostate Cancer Detection Program (Bartsch G, et al. (2008) BJU Int 101, 809-816) using a computational framework (Banerjee S, et al. (2011) PLoS One 29;6(3)). The study results establish non-coding and coding germline CNVs as significant risk factors for prostate cancer susceptibility and implicate their role in disease development and progression. The study "Identification of functionally active, low frequency copy number variants at 15q21.3 and 12q21.31 associated with prostate cancer risk," Demichelis F, Setlur SR, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Apr 24;109(17):6686-91.</p>
Project description:There is a need to understand genetic and lifestyle factors that may influence the risk of cancer progression in men who have organ-confined prostate cancer and have chosen a programme of 'active surveillance' as opposed to radical treatment with the associated health risks. Epidemiological studies have suggested that consumption of cruciferous vegetables is associated with reduced risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer. In this study we recruited men on active surveillance for low- to intermediate-risk prostate cancer to determine whether a 12-month dietary intervention can elicit transcriptional or nmetabolic responses in their prostate that would be consistent with a reduction in the risk of progression. We undertook RNAseq on prostate biopsies collected before and after a 12-month intervention with broccoli soups.
Project description:Prostate cancer-associated stroma (CAS) plays an active role in malignant transformation, tumor progression, and metastasis. Molecular analyses of CAS have demonstrated significant changes in gene expression; however, conflicting evidence exists on whether genomic alterations in benign cells comprising the tumor microenvironment (TME) underlie gene expression changes and oncogenic phenotypes. This study evaluates the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA integrity of prostate carcinoma cells, CAS, matched benign epithelium and benign epithelium-associated stroma by whole genome copy number analyses, targeted sequencing of TP53, and fluorescence in situ hybridization. Comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) of CAS revealed a copy-neutral diploid genome with only rare and small somatic copy number aberrations (SCNAs). In contrast, several expected recurrent SCNAs were evident in the adjacent prostate carcinoma cells, including gains at 3q, 7p, and 8q, and losses at 8p and 10q. No somatic TP53 mutations were observed in CAS. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) extracted from carcinoma cells and stroma identified 23 somatic mtDNA mutations in neoplastic epithelial cells but only one mutation in stroma. Finally, genomic analyses identified no SCNAs, no loss of heterozygosity (LOH) or copy-neutral LOH in cultured cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), which are known to promote prostate cancer progression in vivo. Agilent whole human genome aCGH oligonucleotide microarrays were used to assess copy number aberrations in 79 specimens from 20 patients as well as two pairs of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF) and benign/normal associated fibroblasts (NAF). 3 CAF/NAF sample pairs were also assessed for DNA copy number aberrations and copy-neutral LOH using the Infinium HumanOmniExpressExome BeadChip Kit.
Project description:A prostate cancer risk single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), rs13426236, is significantly associated with melanophilin (MLPH) expression. To functionally characterize role of the rs13426236 in prostate cancer, we first performed splicing-specific expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTL) analysis and refined the significant association of rs13426236 allele G with an increased expression of MLPH splicing variant 4 (V4) (P= 7.61E-5) but not other protein-coding variants (V1-V3) (P>0.05). We then performed an allele-specific reporter assay to determine if SNP-containing sequences functioned as active enhancer. Compared to allele A, allele G of rs13426236 showed significantly higher luciferase activity on the promoter of the splicing transcript V4 (P <0.03) but not on promoter of transcript V1 (P>0.05) in two prostate cancer cell lines (DU145 and 22Rv1). Transfection of MLPH splicing variants showed stronger effect of transcript V4 than V1 on promoting cell proliferation, invasion and anti-apoptotic activities. RNA profiling analysis demonstrated that transcript V4 overexpression caused significant expression changes in glycosylation/glycoprotein and metal-binding gene ontology pathways (FDR<0.01). We also found that both transcripts V4 and V1 were significantly up-regulated in prostate adenocarcinoma (P<2.49E-6) but only transcript V4 up-regulation was associated with poor recurrence free survival (P=0.028, HR=1.63, 95%CI=1.05-2.42) in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data. This study provides strong evidence showing that prostate cancer risk SNP rs13426236 up-regulates expression of MLPH transcript V4, which may function as a candidate oncogene in prostate cancer.
Project description:Prostate cancer-associated stroma (CAS) plays an active role in malignant transformation, tumor progression, and metastasis. Molecular analyses of CAS have demonstrated significant changes in gene expression; however, conflicting evidence exists on whether genomic alterations in benign cells comprising the tumor microenvironment (TME) underlie gene expression changes and oncogenic phenotypes. This study evaluates the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA integrity of prostate carcinoma cells, CAS, matched benign epithelium and benign epithelium-associated stroma by whole genome copy number analyses, targeted sequencing of TP53, and fluorescence in situ hybridization. Comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) of CAS revealed a copy-neutral diploid genome with only rare and small somatic copy number aberrations (SCNAs). In contrast, several expected recurrent SCNAs were evident in the adjacent prostate carcinoma cells, including gains at 3q, 7p, and 8q, and losses at 8p and 10q. No somatic TP53 mutations were observed in CAS. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) extracted from carcinoma cells and stroma identified 23 somatic mtDNA mutations in neoplastic epithelial cells but only one mutation in stroma. Finally, genomic analyses identified no SCNAs, no loss of heterozygosity (LOH) or copy-neutral LOH in cultured cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), which are known to promote prostate cancer progression in vivo.