Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of
cancer-related death. The
androgen deprivation
therapy is the standard treatment for advanced stages. Unfortunately, virtually all
tumors become resistant to
androgen withdrawal. The progression to
castration-resistance is not fully understood, although a recent paper has suggested
translationally controlled tumor protein to be implicated in the process. The present study was designed to investigate the role of this
protein in
prostate cancer, focusing on the correlation between its expression level with
tumor differentiation and response to treatment. We retrieved 292
prostatic cancer specimens; of these 153 had been treated only by radical
prostatectomy and 139 had undergone radical
prostatectomy after
neoadjuvant treatment with combined
androgen blockade
therapy. Non-neoplastic controls were represented by 102 prostatic peripheral zone specimens. In untreated patients, the expression of the
protein, evaluated by RT-qPCR and immunohistochemistry, was significantly higher in
tumor specimens than in non-neoplastic control, increasing as Gleason pattern and score progressed. In treated prostates, the staining was correlated with the response to treatment. An association between
protein expression and the main clinicopathological factors involved in
prostate cancer aggressiveness was identified. These findings suggest that the
protein may be a promising prognostic factor and a target for
therapy.