Metabolic deregulation in prostate cancer

Abstract

IntroductionThe prostate exhibits a unique metabolism that changes during initial neoplasia to aggressive prostate cancer (PCa) and metastasis. The study of PCa metabolism thus represents a new avenue for diagnostics, particularly early diagnosis of aggressive PCa cases.\n\nResultsHere, using transcriptomics data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (498 PCa patients), we identified six metabolic subgroups (C1-C6) of PCa that showed distinct disease-free survival outcomes (p\nView larger version (18K):\norg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1418863org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1614d77org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@124ca98org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@70d53b_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG ConclusionThe identification of PCa subgroups displaying distinct clinical outcomes solely from metabolic expression profiles of PCa tumours reiterates the significant link between deregulated metabolism and PCa outcomes (Eidelman et al., 2017). On the other hand, the time to biochemical relapse (rise in PSA levels) was not indicative of the early relapse seen for the metabolically deregulated subgroups C3 and C5 (these show considerably late BCR compared to C4). Our study thus highlights specific processes (elevated lipid and carbohydrate metabolism pathways) that could be better indicators than PSA for early diagnosis of aggressive PCa.