Aquaporin 5 expression is frequent in prostate cancer and shows a dichotomous correlation with tumor phenotype and PSA recurrence Alexandra Pust MD, Dominik Kylies, Claudia Hube-Magg PhD, Martina Kluth, Sarah Minner MD, Christina Koop, Tobias Grob PhD, MD, Markus Graefen MD, Georg Salomon MD, Maria Christina Tsourlakis MD, Jakob Izbicki MD, Corinna Wittmer MD, Hartwig Huland MD, Ronald Simon PhD, Waldemar Wilczak MD, Guido Sauter MD, Stefan Steurer MD, Till Krech MD, Thorsten Schlomm MD, Nathaniel Melling MD PII: DOI: Reference:
S0046-8177(15)00388-3 doi: 10.1016/j.humpath.2015.09.026 YHUPA 3712
To appear in:
Human Pathology
Received date: Revised date: Accepted date:
24 April 2015 2 September 2015 19 September 2015
Please cite this article as: Pust Alexandra, Kylies Dominik, Hube-Magg Claudia, Kluth Martina, Minner Sarah, Koop Christina, Grob Tobias, Graefen Markus, Salomon Georg, Tsourlakis Maria Christina, Izbicki Jakob, Wittmer Corinna, Huland Hartwig, Simon Ronald, Wilczak Waldemar, Sauter Guido, Steurer Stefan, Krech Till, Schlomm Thorsten, Melling Nathaniel, Aquaporin 5 expression is frequent in prostate cancer and shows a dichotomous correlation with tumor phenotype and PSA recurrence, Human Pathology (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.humpath.2015.09.026
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Aquaporin 5 expression is frequent in prostate cancer and shows a dichotomous correlation with tumor phenotype and PSA recurrence Alexandra Pust MD a*, Dominik Kyliesa*, Claudia Hube-Magg PhD a, Martina Klutha, Sarah
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Minner MD a, Christina Koopa, Tobias Grob PhD, MD a, Markus Graefen MD c, Georg
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Salomon MD c, Maria Christina Tsourlakis MD a, Jakob Izbicki MD b, Corinna Wittmer MD a, Hartwig Huland MD c, Ronald Simon PhD a#, Waldemar Wilczak MD a, Guido Sauter MD a,
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Stefan Steurer MD a, Till Krech MD a, Thorsten Schlomm MD c,d, Nathaniel Melling MD a,b
Institute of Pathology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
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General, Visceral and Thoracic Surgery Department and Clinic, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
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Martini-Clinic, Prostate Cancer Center, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
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a
Department of Urology, Section for translational Prostate Cancer Research, University
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Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
Corresponding author: Dr. Ronald Simon, Institute of Pathology, University Medical
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#
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* These authors contributed equally to this work.
Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistr. 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany, Tel: +49 40 7410
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57214, FAX +49 40 7410 55997, E-mail:
[email protected]
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Summary Aquaporin 5 (AQP5) is an androgen-regulated member of a family of small hydrophobic
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integral trans membrane water channel proteins regulating cellular water homeostasis and
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growth signaling. To evaluate its clinical impact and relationship with key genomic alterations in prostate cancer, AQP5 expression was analyzed by immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray containing 12,427 prostate cancers. The analysis revealed weak to moderate
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immunostaining in normal prostate epithelium. In prostate cancers AQP5 staining levels were more variable and also included completely negative and highly overexpressing cases.
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Negative, weak, moderate, and strong AQP5 staining was found in 25.0%, 32.5%, 32.5% and 10.0% of 10,239 interpretable tumors. Comparison of AQP5 expression levels with tumor characteristics showed a dichotomous pattern with both high and low staining levels being linked to unfavorable tumor phenotype. AQP5 was negative in 28%, 23%, 24% and 35% of tumors with Gleason score ≤3+3, 3+4, 4+3 and ≥4+4, while the rate of strongly positive cases continuously increased from 7.0% over 10.0% and 12.0% to 13.0% in cancers
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with Gleason score ≤3+3, 3+4, 4+3 and ≥4+4. AQP5 expression was also related to ERG positivity and PTEN deletion (p<0.0001 each). Strong AQP5 positivity was seen in 15.5% of
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ERG positive and 5.8% of ERG negative cancers (p<0.0001) as well as in 14.7% of cancers with PTEN deletion and 9.4% of cancers without PTEN deletion. Remarkably, both negativity and strong positivity of AQP5 were linked to unfavorable disease outcome. This was
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however only seen in subgroups defined by TMPRSS2:ERG fusion and/or PTEN deletion. In summary, AQP5 can be both overexpressed and lost in subgroups of prostate cancers. Both
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alterations are linked to unfavorable outcome in molecularly defined cancer subgroups. It is hypothesized that this dichotomous role of AQP5 is due to two highly different mechanisms as to how the protein can influence cancer cells, i.e. hydraulic motility regulation and Ras/MAPK pathway activation. Keywords: AQP5; prostate cancer; tissue microarray; biochemical recurrence
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1. Introduction
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Prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer in men in Western societies (1). Although the majority of prostate cancers behave in an indolent manner, a small subset is highly aggressive and requires extensive treatment (2, 3). Established prognostic parameters are
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limited to Gleason grade and tumor extent on biopsies, preoperative prostate-specific antigen (PSA), and clinical stage. Although these data are statistically powerful, they are often
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insufficient for optimal treatment decisions in individuals. It is hoped that a better understanding of disease biology will eventually lead to the identification of clinically applicable molecular markers that enable a more reliable prediction of prostate cancer aggressiveness.
Aquaporins (AQPs), a family of 13 small hydrophobic integral trans membrane water channel
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proteins (4, 5), have recently gained interest as potential targets for novel antitumor therapy (6-10). AQPs are expressed in basically all normal tissues (http://www.genecards.org/cgiwhere they contribute to regulation
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bin/carddisp.pl?gene=AQP5&search=c2d4c0972925c4d4b566bb9ca45e3c28),
of cellular water homeostasis (11). It has been suggested that cancer cells take advantage of this mechanism to form hydraulic motile protrusions, which facilitate cell migration and
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invasive tumor growth (12-16). In addition, activated AQPs have been shown to induce the Ras/MAPK growth signaling pathway in vitro (14). In support of a tumor relevant role of
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AQPs, altered expression of some of them has been linked to adverse phenotype in many cancers, such as breast cancer (16-18), hepatocellular carcinoma (19), colorectal carcinoma (13, 20), chronic myelogenous leukemia (21), lung cancer (22, 23), ovarian cancer (15, 24), cervical cancer (25) and squamous cell carcinoma (10). In prostate cancer AQP5 is of particular interest, because it is regulated in an androgen receptor (AR) dependent manner (26). A tumor relevant role of AQP5 in prostate cancer is also supported by one study on 60 prostate cancers suggesting a link between AQP5 expression and patient outcome (27).
Based on these promising findings, we sought to clarify the value of AQP5 as a prognostic marker in prostate cancer using our preexisting large prostate cancer tissue microarray (TMA) built from tumor samples of more than 12,000 individual prostate cancer patients. The database attached to this TMA contains comprehensive molecular, pathological and clinical follow up data. Our findings suggest complex interactions with other androgen and nonandrogen dependent pathways with impact on clinical outcome depending on the specific molecular background of prostate cancers. 3
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2. Materials and Methods
2.1 Patients
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Radical prostatectomy specimens were available from 12,427 patients, undergoing
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surgery between 1992 and 2012 at the Department of Urology and the Martini Clinics at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Follow-up data were available for a total of 12,344 patients with a median follow-up of 36 months (range: 1 to 241
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months; Table 1). Prostate specific antigen (PSA) values were measured following surgery and PSA recurrence was defined as the time point when postoperative PSA
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was at least 0.2ng/ml and increasing at subsequent measurements. All prostate specimens were analyzed according to a standard procedure, including a complete embedding of the entire prostate for histological analysis (28). The TMA manufacturing process was described earlier in detail (29). In short, one 0.6mm core was taken from a representative tissue block from each patient. The tissues were distributed among 27 TMA blocks, each containing 144 to 522 tumor samples. For
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internal controls, each TMA block also contained various control tissues, including normal prostate tissue. The molecular database attached to this TMA contained
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results on ERG expression in 10,711 ((30)), ERG break apart FISH analysis in 7,122 (expanded from (31)) and deletion status of 5q21 (CHD1) in 7,932 (expanded from
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(32)), 6q15 (MAP3K7) in 6,069 (expanded from (33)), PTEN (10q23) in 6,704 (expanded from (34)) and 3p13 (FOXP1) in 7,081 (expanded from (35)) cancers. Analysis of patient and corresponding histopathological data for research purposes,
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as well as construction of tissue microarrays from archived diagnostic left-over tissues, was approved by local laws (HmbKHG, §12,1) and by the local ethics committee (Ethics commission Hamburg, WF-049/09 and PV3652). All work was carried out in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration. 2.2 Immunohistochemistry Freshly cut TMA sections were immunostained on one day and in one experiment. Slides were deparaffinized and exposed to heat-induced antigen retrieval for 5 minutes in an autoclave at 121°C in pH 7,8 Tris-EDTA-Citrate buffer. Primary antibody specific for AQP5 (rabbit monoclonal antibody (clone EPR3747), Abcam, Cambridge, UK; cat#92320; dilution 1:450) was applied at 37°C for 60 minutes. Bound antibody was then visualized using the EnVision Kit (Dako, Glostrup, Denmark) according to the manufacturer’s directions. The staining intensity and the fraction of stained tumor cells were recorded in each tissue spot. A final IHC score was built from these two parameters according to the following criteria as previously
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cells).
Statistical calculations were performed with JMP® 10.0.2 software (SAS Institute Inc., NC, USA). Contingency tables and the chi²-test were performed to search for
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associations between molecular parameters and tumor phenotype. Survival curves were calculated according to Kaplan-Meier. The Log-Rank test was applied to detect
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significant differences between groups. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was applied to search for associations between cell proliferation and AQP5 staining. 3. Results
3.1 Technical issues
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A total of 10,239 (82%) of tumor samples were interpretable in our TMA analysis. Reasons for non-informative cases (2,188; 18%) included lack of tissue samples or
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absence of unequivocal cancer tissue in the TMA spot. 3.2 AQP5 expression in normal and prostate cancer cells
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Normal prostate luminal cells typically showed weak or moderate AQP5 staining, while basal cells were negative. AQP5 immunostaining was localized in the cytoplasm of invasive prostate cancers and was deemed positive in 7,677 of our 10,239 (75%)
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interpretable prostate cancers (weak 32.5%, moderate 32.5%, strong 9.9% of cancers). Representative images of negative and positive AQP5 immunostainings are given in Fig. 1. 3.3 Association with TMPRSS2:ERG fusion status and ERG protein expression To evaluate whether AQP5 expression is associated with ERG status in prostate cancers, we used data from previous studies (expanded from (30, 31). Data on TMPRSS2:ERG fusion status obtained by FISH were available from 6,022 and by immunohistochemistry from 8,947 tumors with evaluable AQP5 immunostaining. Data on both ERG FISH and IHC were available from 5,796 cancers, and an identical result (ERG IHC positive and break by FISH or ERG IHC negative and missing break by FISH) was found in 5,532 of 5,796 (95.4%) cancers. AQP5 immunostaining was significantly more frequent in TMPRSS2:ERG rearranged and ERG-positive prostate cancers than in tumors without TMPRSS2:ERG fusion and ERG-negative tumors. Positive AQP5 immunostaining was seen in 88.5% (ERG IHC) and 89.0% (ERG
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT FISH) of ERG-positive cancers but in only 65.8% and 69.1% of cancers without ERG staining or ERG rearrangement (p<0.0001 each; Fig. 2). 3.4 Associations with tumor phenotype Interestingly, strong AQP5 staining intensity but also lack of staining were both linked
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to adverse clinico-pathological parameters such as high Gleason grade and
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advanced pathological tumor stage (p<0.0001 each, Table 2), lymph node positivity (p=0.0487) and preoperative PSA levels (p=0.0002) when all prostate cancers were analyzed. No link was found to the surgical resection margin status (p=0.16). Similar
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associations were also found for high Gleason grade and advanced pathological tumor stage (p<0.0001, p=0.01 respectively, Supplementary Table 1) in the subgroup
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of ERG-negative cancers. In ERG-positive cancers, negative and strong AQP5 staining was linked to all the evaluated parameters (high Gleason grade, advanced tumor stage, lymph node metastasis (p<0.0001 each), preoperative PSA levels (p=0.0003), surgical resection margin (p=0.02; Supplementary Table 2)). 3.5 Association with other key genomic deletions
Earlier studies had provided evidence for distinct molecular subgroups of prostate
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cancers defined by TMPRSS2:ERG fusions and several genomic deletions. Previous studies by others and us described a strong link of PTEN and 3p13 deletions to ERG
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positivity and of 5q21 and 6q15 deletions to ERG negativity (32-35). To study, whether AQP5 expression might be particularly associated with one of these genomic
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deletions, AQP5 data were compared to preexisting findings on PTEN (10q23), 3p13 (FOXP1), 6q15 (MAP3K7) and 5q21 (CHD1) deletions. In the analysis of all tumors, AQP5 expression proved to be significantly linked to all four genomic deletions
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mentioned above (PTEN, 6q15 and 5q21 p<0.0001 each, 3p13 p=0.0056; Fig. 3A). For PTEN and 3p13 deletions the link was established with positive AQP5 staining and for 6q15 and 5q21 deletions a correlation with negative staining was found. In the subgroup of ERG-negative cancers the associations were reduced to deletions of PTEN and 6q15 (p=0.0003 and p=0.0319 respectively; Fig 3B), but in the same manner as described for all cancers. The subgroup of ERG-positive cancers revealed that negative AQP5 staining was associated with deletions of 3p13 (p<0.0001; Fig. 3C), which represents inverse behavior compared to the link found for all cancers. 3.6 Association with tumor cell proliferation (Ki67 labeIing index) High-level AQP5 staining was significantly linked to increased cell proliferation as measured by Ki67 labeling index in all cancers (p<0.0001) as well as in cancers of identical Gleason score (p<0.001 each; Table 3) except for the smallest subgroup of cancers with Gleason score ≥4+4 (p=0.71). 3.7 Association with PSA recurrence
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Follow-up data were available for 9,631 patients with interpretable AQP5 immunostaining on the TMA. A convincing association between AQP5 expression and early PSA recurrence was not seen in all tumors despite statistical significance (p=0.03; Fig. 4A). In the subset of ERG- negative tumors strong AQP5 staining was
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linked to early biochemical recurrence (p=0.009; Fig. 4B), while, surprisingly, PSA
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recurrence in ERG- positive cancers was linked to lack of AQP5 staining (p=0.004; Fig. 4C). Cancers without PTEN deletion showed no correlation of staining intensity to PSA recurrence-free survival (p=0.15; Fig. 4D). Furthermore, cancers with PTEN
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deletion showed reduced PSA recurrence-free survival for both negative and strong staining (p=0.002; Fig. 4E) as opposed to weak and moderate staining. The most
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striking correlation between AQP5 staining and early PSA recurrence was found for the subset of ERG-negative cancers, in which negative and strong AQP5 expression proved to be prognostic factors even in cancers harboring deletions of PTEN, which itself is one of the strongest known prognosticators in prostate cancer (p<0.0001; Fig.
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4. Discussion Our results show that prostate cancers can display highly increased or markedly reduced AQP5 expression, both of which are linked to PSA recurrence in molecularly defined tumor
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subsets, particularly in PTEN deleted cancers.
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AQP5 staining was typically weak to moderate in normal prostatic epithelium and also in most cancers except for a fraction of tumors with obviously reduced expression (25%) or clear-cut overexpression (10.0%). That an overall frequency of 81.7% AQP5 positive
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prostate cancers was observed in an earlier study (27), coming close to the 75.0% AQP5 expressing tumors in our study, suggests that the experimental conditions were comparable.
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As Li et al analyzed large sections, this concordance indirectly also argues against substantial tissue heterogeneity of AQP5 expression, which would have led to markedly lower rates of positivity in our tissue microarray analysis (27). Comparison of AQP5 expression with tumor recurrence revealed an uncommon, dichotomous relationship, which appears to be dependent of the cellular microenvironment, i.e. presence of TMPRSS2:ERG fusion and/or PTEN deletion. Interpretation of this
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observation is difficult. It might be speculated, that this unusual impact on outcome is related to the two distinct cellular functions of AQP5. It has been suggested that AQP5 both induces
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hydrostatic pressure changes contributing to localized cell membrane protrusions facilitating cell motility (38) but also triggers cell proliferation via activation of the Ras/MAPK growth
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pathway (14). It appears possible that the role of AQP5 in regulating these mechanisms is differently or even inversely influenced by ERG activation and/or PTEN inactivation. Interaction of PTEN and AQP5 is supported by experimental evidence (39, 40) showing that
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the small GTPase Ras related protein 1 (Rap1) has a regulatory effect on pathways involving both PTEN and AQP5. A critical role of the cellular microenvironment on the prognostic impact of AQP5 is also supported by earlier studies linking its overexpression to unfavorable prognosis in some tumor types but to favorable clinical outcome in others. AQP5 expression is associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer (16-18), hepatocellular carcinoma (19), colorectal carcinoma (13, 20), chronic myelogenous leukemia (21), lung cancer (22, 23), ovarian cancer (24) (15), cervical cancer (25) and oral squamous cell carcinoma (10), but to better outcome in gallbladder (41) and biliary tract cancer (42). AQP5 is an example of a biomarker that shows variable prognostic value only in specific molecular subsets. This is not uncommon. We have earlier identified other markers (e.g. mTOR (43), SEC14L1 (44), NY-ESO (45) with prognostic impact limited to a particular molecular environment, such as cancers with TMPRSS2:ERG fusion and PTEN deletion in the above mentioned cases. Although AQP5 does not appear to be a clinically suitable
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT prognostic marker in prostate cancer, it is noteworthy that some AQPs have recently gained interest as potential targets for novel anti-cancer therapies. In vitro models suggest that inhibition of AQP3 and 8, for example by small interfering RNA (8) or growth pathway kinase inhibitors (7, 9, 46), decreases cell proliferation and migration in cell lines obtained from
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pancreatic, gastric and esophageal cancers. Moreover, knock down of AQP1 and AQP3
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conferred impaired angiogenesis and resistance to skin cancers, respectively, in mouse models (41). The high prevalence of AQP5 expression in prostate cancer suggests that
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AQP5 inhibiting molecules could be tested in prostate cancer once they become available.
In summary, our results demonstrate that AQP5 can be both up-regulated and down-
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regulated in prostate cancers and that both of these conditions can lead to unfavorable clinical outcome in certain molecularly defined prostate cancer subgroups. Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Janett Lütgens, Sünje Seekamp, Inge Brandt, Bianca Kelp and Anne
Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
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Table 1 Pathological and clinical data of the arrayed prostate cancers No. of patients (%) Study cohort on Biochemical relapse TMA(n=12,427) among categories
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Parameter
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Follow-up (mo) n 11,665 (94) 2,769 (24) Mean 48.9 Median 36.4 Age (y) ≤50 334 (3) 81 (24) 51-59 3,061 (25) 705 (23) 60-69 7,188 (58) 1,610 (22) ≥70 1,761 (14) 370 (21) Pretreatment PSA (ng/ml) <4 1,585 (13) 242 (15) 4-10 7,480 (61) 1,355 (18) >10-20 2,412 (20) 737 (31) >20 812 (7) 397 (49) pT stage pT2 8,187 (66) 1,095 (13) pT3a 2,660 (22) 817 (31) pT3b 1,465 (12) 796 (54) pT4 63 (1) 51 (81) Gleason grade ≤3+3 2,983 (24) 368 (12) 3+4 6,945 (56) 1,289 (19) 4+3 1,848 (15) 788 (43) ≥4+4 584 (5) 311 (53) pN stage pN0 6,970 (91) 1,636 (24) pN+ 693 (9) 393 (57) Surgical margin Negative 9,990 (82) 1,848 (19) Positive 2,211 (18) 853 (39) Percentage in the column “Study cohort on TMA” refers to the fraction of samples across each category. Percentage in column “Biochemical relapse among categories” refers to the fraction of samples with biochemical relapse within each parameter in the different categories. Abbreviation: TMA tissue micro array
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Table 2 Association between AQP5 immunostaining and prostate cancer phenotype Evaluable (n)
Negative
All cancers
10239
25.0
32.5
Tumor stage pT2 pT3a pT3b-pT4
6655 2268 1276
26.0 22.8 23.6
33.0 31.5 32.0
Gleason grade ≤3+3 3+4 4+3 ≥4+4
2302 5806 1591 485
Lymph node metastasis N0 N+
5710 587
32.4 33.2 32.4
8.7 12.4 12.0
<0.0001
34.3 32.2 33.8 24.7
30.9 34.4 29.9 27.6
7.0 10.1 12.4 12.8
<0.0001
23.9 27.4
33.0 30.0
32.5 29.6
10.7 12.9
0.049
1267 6130 2033 705
22.4 24.5 26.2 30.1
31.9 32.3 34.4 31.2
36.4 33.0 29.3 30.6
9.3 10.2 10.1 8.1
0.0002
8184 1866
24.9 25.5
32.9 31.4
32.6 32.0
9.6 11.1
0.16
PT
SC
MA NU 27.8 23.3 23.9 34.8
RI P
9.9
ED
AC
Surgical margin negative positive
p value
32.5
CE
Preoperative PSA level (ng/ml) <4 4-10 >10-20 >20
T
AQP5 (%) Weak Moderate Strong
Parameter
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Table 3 Association between AQP5 immunostaining results and Ki67 labeling index.
pGleason ≤3+3 p<0.0001
1472 2024 2032
strong
559
negative weak moderate
347 460 450
strong
94
3.4
0.1
1.5 2.2 2.6
0.1 0.1 0.1
2.6
0.2
785 1168 1256
2.0 2.6 2.9
0.1 0.1 0.1
341
3.2
0.1
227 322 258
3.0 3.2 3.9
0.2 0.2 0.2
92
4.4
0.4
99 63 61
5.1 4.4 4.2
0.5 0.6 0.6
strong negative weak moderate
31 746 1073 1063
4.9 2.7 2.9 3.2
0.9 0.1 0.1 0.1
strong negative weak moderate
284 89 222 284
3.5 3.9 3.2 3.9
0.2 0.3 0.2 0.2
84
4.2
0.3
negative weak moderate
pGleason 3+4 p<0.0001
strong
strong
PT
negative weak moderate
AC
CE
pGleason ≥4+4 p=0.71
PTEN norm p=0.0001
PTEN del p=0.015
ED
negative weak moderate
pGleason 4+3 p=0.0009
T
negative weak moderate
MA NU
all p<0.0001
KI 67 labeling index Mean SD 2.3 0.1 2.7 0.1 3.0 0.1
n
RI P
AQP5
strong Abbreviation: SD standard deviation
SC
Parameter p value
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Fig 1 Representative pictures of AQP5 immunostaining in prostate cancer with (A) negative,
T
(B) weak, (C) moderate and (D) strong staining
RI P
Fig 2 Association between AQP5 immunostaining and ERG-status (IHC/FISH) in all cancers Fig 3 Association between AQP5 immunostaining and 10q23 (PTEN), 5q21 (CHD1), 6q15
SC
(MAP3K7), 3p13 (FOXP1) deletions in (A) all cancers, in the (B) ERG-negative and the (C) ERG-positive subset
MA NU
Fig 4 Kaplan-Meier curves for prostate antigen (PSA) recurrence and AQP5 expression in (A) all cancers, (B) the ERG- negative subset, (C) the ERG- positive subset, (D) PTEN
AC
CE
PT
ED
normal cancers (E) PTEN deleted cancers and (F) ERG- positive and PTEN deleted cancers
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Figure 1
AC
CE
PT
ED
MA NU
SC
RI P
T
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MA NU
SC
RI P
T
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AC
CE
PT
ED
Figure 2
18
AC
Figure 3
CE
PT
ED
MA NU
SC
RI P
T
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AC
Figure 4
CE
PT
ED
MA NU
SC
RI P
T
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