1. ¹Center for Prostate Disease Research (CPDR), Department of Surgery and US Military Cancer Institute, Uniformed Services University, Rockville, MD 20852, USA
2. ²Department of Genitourinary Pathology, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, DC 20306, USA
3. ³Laboratory of Functional Genomics, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Rockville, MD 20850, USA
4. ⁴Cancer Genetics Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
5. ⁵Urology Service, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC 20307, USA

Correspondence: S Srivastava, E-mail: [email protected]

G Petrovics, E-mail: [email protected]

⁶Current address: Division of Urologic Surgery, Box 3707, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710

⁷These authors contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Transcription factors encoded by the ETS family of genes are central in integrating signals that regulate cell growth and differentiation, stress responses, and tumorigenesis. This study, analysing laser microdissected paired benign and malignant prostate epithelial cells from prostate cancer (CaP) patients (n=114; 228 specimen) by GeneChip and quantitative real-time RT−PCR, identifies ETS-related gene (ERG), a member of the ETS transcription factor family, as the most frequently overexpressed proto-oncogene in the transcriptome of malignant prostate epithelial cells. Combined quantitative expression analysis of ERG with two other genes commonly overexpressed in CaP, AMACR and DD3, revealed overexpression of at least one of these three genes in virtually all CaP specimen (54 of 55). Comprehensive evaluation of quantitative ERG1 expression with clinicopathological features also suggested that ERG1 expression level in prostate tumor cells relative to benign epithelial cells is indicator of disease-free survival after radical prostatectomy.