Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Feb 1;8(2):1878-88.
eCollection 2015.

Nuclear C-MYC expression level is associated with disease progression and potentially predictive of two year overall survival in prostate cancer

Wen Zeng  1 , Hanying Sun  1 , Fankai Meng  1 , Zeming Liu  2 , Jing Xiong  3 , Sheng Zhou  3 , Fan Li  4 , Jia Hu  4 , Zhiquan Hu  4 , Zheng Liu  4
Affiliations

Nuclear C-MYC expression level is associated with disease progression and potentially predictive of two year overall survival in prostate cancer

Wen Zeng et al. Int J Clin Exp Pathol. .

Abstract

Purpose: Upregulation of nuclear C-MYC protein has been reported to be an early event in prostate cancer (PCa); however, its clinicopathological and prognostic significance remain controversial. We determined the association of nuclear C-MYC protein expression with clinicopathological parameters, prognosis, ETS-related gene (ERG) expression, and TMPRSS2-ERG status in PCa.

Methods: Nuclear C-MYC and ERG expression by immunohistochemistry and TMPRSS2-ERG status by triple-color probe fluorescence in situ hybridization assay were determined in 50 hormone-naïve PCa patients and 31 radical prostatectomy specimens.

Results: Nuclear C-MYC immunostaining was negative, positive, and strong positive in 27.5%, 32.5%, and 40.0% of cases, respectively. C-MYC immunostaining was significantly associated with clinical T stage (P < 0.001), distant metastasis at the time of diagnosis (P < 0.001) and TMPRSS2-ERG status (P = 0.001) but not with ERG immunostaining (P = 0.818). In the Kaplan-Meier analysis, C-MYC positive cases were found to have worse 2-year OS compared with C-MYC negative cases (P = 0.027). However, in the univariate Cox analysis, only TMPRSS2-ERG status (hazard ratio [HR] 0.189, 95% CI 0.057-0.629; P = 0.007) and distant metastasis (HR 3.545, 95% CI 1.056-11.894; P = 0.040) were significantly associated with 2-year OS. After adjusting for these two factors, TMPRSS2-ERG status still impacted 2-year OS (HR 0.196, 95% CI 0.049-0.778; P = 0.020).

Conclusions: Nuclear C-MYC overexpression may be associated with disease progression and potentially predictive of 2-year OS in PCa. This is the first study to demonstrate an association between nuclear C-MYC immunostaining and TMPRSS2-ERG status in PCa.

Keywords: C-MYC; ERG; TMPRSS2-ERG; immunohistochemistry; prostate cancer.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Representative ERG negative (A), ERG heterogeneous (B), ERG positive (C), C-MYC negative (D; QS = 0), C-MYC positive (E; QS = 1~3), and C-MYC strong positive (F; QS = 4~6) immunostaining (400 ×). QS, quick score.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A. Schematic map of ‘TMPRSS2’ and ‘ERG’ gene region on 21q22. Red, blue and green signal represents the distal TMPRSS2, proximal TMPRSS2 and proximal ERG gene region, respectively. B-E. Represent four different TMPRSS2-ERG patterns identified in this study.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Lapointe J, Li C, Giacomini CP, Salari K, Huang S, Wang P, Ferrari M, Hernandez-Boussard T, Brooks JD, Pollack JR. Genomic profiling reveals alternative genetic pathways of prostate tumorigenesis. Cancer Res. 2007;67:8504–8510. - PubMed
    1. Sato H, Minei S, Hachiya T, Yoshida T, Takimoto Y. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis of c-myc amplification in stage TNM prostate cancer in Japanese patients. Int J Urol. 2006;13:761–766. - PubMed
    1. Fromont G, Godet J, Peyret A, Irani J, Celhay O, Rozet F, Cathelineau X, Cussenot O. 8q24 amplification is associated with Myc expression and prostate cancer progression and is an independent predictor of recurrence after radical prostatectomy. Hum Pathol. 2013;44:1617–1623. - PubMed
    1. Bova GS, Isaacs WB. Review of allelic loss and gain in prostate cancer. World J Urol. 1996;14:338–346. - PubMed
    1. Tomlins SA, Mehra R, Rhodes DR, Cao X, Wang L, Dhanasekaran SM, Kalyana-Sundaram S, Wei JT, Rubin MA, Pienta KJ, Shah RB, Chinnaiyan AM. Integrative molecular concept modeling of prostate cancer progression. Nat Genet. 2007;39:41–51. - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources