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Prostate cancer: specific gene predicts higher survival chances

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(Vienna, 23 April 2020) The most common form of cancer in older men is prostate cancer. In many cases the tumour grows slowly and can be treated effectively, but it is sometimes more aggressive and becomes terminal. Research jointly conducted by a team led by Monika Oberhuber – under the supervision of Lukas Kenner from MedUni Vienna’s Department of Pathology – and the CBmed COMET research centre in Graz has proved that higher levels of the PDK4 gene in tumour tissue can indicate a better prognosis. The study was published in the highly respected journal Molecular Systems Biology.

According to Statistics Austria about 5,600 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in Austria every year, meaning it accounts for roughly a quarter of all cancers in men. For some the cancer develops slowly and requires minimal treatment, but others have aggressive forms of the disease which progress very quickly. In order to be able to treat prostate cancer more effectively, better understanding of the complex mechanisms that occur at the molecular level within the tumour is needed. In 2015, a team led by molecular pathologist Lukas Kenner of MedUni Vienna made the unexpected discovery that the protein STAT3 plays a tumour-suppressing role in prostate cancer using a mouse model. They showed that the progression of the disease was significantly worse in patients with low STAT3 levels in cancer cells, compared to patients with high levels.

These findings served as the starting point for a recent study conducted by Monika Oberhuber, a doctoral candidate in Kenner’s team at MedUni Vienna’s Department of Pathology, together with the Center for Biomarker Research in Medicine, a COMET Competence Center with funding from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). The study analysed numerous large patient data sets and compared patients with high and low expression of STAT3 in tissue.

This led to the identification of correlations between the expression characteristics of different gene clusters. The researchers discovered that patients with low STAT3 have a highly active metabolism. Metabolism – especially cellular respiration – is much more active in prostate tumours than in healthy prostate tissue. This gives the tumour additional energy to grow. Patients with low STAT3 exhibit higher cellular respiration and more active tumours, in which many new proteins form.
Oberhuber also investigated the relationship between low STAT3 and an active metabolism using paraffin-embedded tissue sections. The tumour tissue was separated from the healthy tissue with a laser microscope and then analysed using mass spectrometry.

Intriguingly, the results showed a direct correlation between STAT3 and PDK4, which slows down cellular respiration. By showing that patients with low STAT3 also had low PDK4, it was possible to prove that PDK4 is directly regulated by STAT3. This means that PDK4 levels are a good predictor of the course of the disease. In other words, prostate cancer patients with low PDK4 have a worse prognosis than patients with high PDK4. The PDK4 gene also plays an important role in the development of other tumours and diseases, such as diabetes. A follow-up study into PDK4 is now planned to investigate its potential applications in prostate cancer treatment. 

Service: Molecular Systems Biology
STAT3-dependent analysis reveals PDK4 as independent predictor of recurrence in
prostate cancer. In: Molecular Systems Biology.
Monika Oberhuber, Matteo Pecoraro, Mate Rusz, Georg Oberhuber, Maritta Wieselberg, Peter Haslinger, Elisabeth Gurnhofer, Michaela Schlederer, Tanja Limberger, Sabine Lagger, Jan Pencik, Petra Kodajova, Sandra Högler, Georg Stockmaier, Sandra Grund-Gröschke, Fritz Aberger, Marco Bolis, Jean-Philippe Theurillat, Robert Wiebringhaus, Theresa Weiss, Andrea Haitel, Marc Brehme, Wolfgang Wadsak, Johannes Griss, Thomas Mohr, Alexandra Hofer, Anton Jäger, Jürgen Pollheimer, Gerda Egger, Gunda Koellensperger, Matthias Mann, Brigitte Hantusch, Lukas Kenner

https://www.embopress.org/doi/10.15252/msb.20199247