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Departments of 1 Urology, 2 Pathology, and 3 Cellular and Structural Biology, University of Texas Health Science Center, and 4 Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas; 5 Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas; 6 Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland; and 7 University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Requests for reprints: Dipen Parekh, Department of Urology, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, TX 78284-7802. Phone: 210-567-5640; Fax: 210-567-6868. E-mail: parekhd{at}uthscsa.edu
| Abstract |
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Methods: A total of 123 incident prostate cancer cases and 127 age-matched controls were selected from subjects in the San Antonio Center for Biomarkers of Risk of Prostate Cancer cohort study. Prediagnostic serum concentrations were measured in the sample collected at baseline using LabMAP technology. The odds ratios (OR) of prostate cancer risk associated with serum concentrations of 54 markers were estimated using univariate conditional logistic regression before and after adjustment for the PCPT risk score. Two-way hierarchical unsupervised clustering techniques were used to evaluate whether the 54-marker panel distinguished cases from controls.
Results: Vascular endothelial growth factor, resistin, interleukin 1Ra (IL-1Ra), granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, matrix metalloproteinase-3, plasminogen activator inhibitor, and kallikrein-8 were statistically significantly (P < 0.05) underexpressed in prostate cancer cases, and
-fetoprotein was statistically significantly overexpressed in prostate cancer cases, but all had area underneath the receiver-operating characteristic curve <60%; none were statistically significant adjusting for multiple comparisons (P < 0.0008) or after adjustment for the PCPT risk score. Statistical clustering of patients by the marker panel did not distinguish a separate group of cases from controls.
Conclusions: This age-matched case-control study did not support findings of increased diagnostic potential from a 54-marker panel when compared with the conventional risk factors incorporated in the PCPT risk calculator. Future discovery of new biomarkers should always be tested and compared against conventional risk factors before applying them in clinical practice. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2007;16(10):1966–72)
| Introduction |
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The purpose of this investigation was to examine the association of a panel of 54 markers with prostate cancer risk in a nested age-matched case control study of 123 cases and 127 controls in the San Antonio Center for Biomarkers of Risk of Prostate Cancer (SABOR) study cohort. The panel includes adipokine markers of immune response, metalloproteinases, adhesion molecules, hormones, growth factors, tumor markers, and other independent molecules not classified as yet under any specific group. This cohort has the advantage that measures of PSA (measured within 1 year of the serum draw for this analysis), family history, age, race, DRE finding, and history of a prior biopsy are available on these men for diagnostic comparison of the new markers.
| Materials and Methods |
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3,500 men from San Antonio and South Texas. This cohort is an effort of the San Antonio Clinical and Epidemiologic Center of the Early Detection Research Network and is supported by the National Cancer Institute. Recruitment of a multiethnic population-based sample was achieved using outreach clinics throughout South Texas. Healthy men, without a history of prostate cancer, were eligible for participation. Participant enrollment began in March 2001 with annual follow-up examinations. A concerted effort was made to over-sample ethnic minorities and medically underserved populations. After informed consent, men completed an extensive series of instruments (demographics, diet, quality of life, family history, ethnicity/race, American Urological Association symptom score), provided biological samples, and underwent a directed physical examination including DRE, height, weight, and anthropometric measures. Serum was collected and stored at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio on all SABOR participants at baseline. Blood sample tubes for serum micronutrient and lipid analyses were collected. Clotted blood was processed in a refrigerated centrifuge, and serum was stored at –70°C. At each annual visit, a brief survey is taken of medical problems, and whether prostate cancer had been diagnosed since the time of the last visit. Thereafter, participants underwent phlebotomy and a DRE. If DRE was abnormal or PSA exceeded 2.5 ng/mL, a prostate biopsy was recommended. After 2004, subjects were provided with information related to prostate cancer risk by level of PSA (15) All prostate cancer cases were reviewed by a central pathologist. A total of 123 prostate cancer cases were diagnosed subsequent to enrollment in the cohort. For each case, one control was sampled from the cohort using incidence density sampling (16) to ensure that age-matched controls had accrued at least the same amount of follow-up time as the matched cases at their time of diagnosis.
Marker Assessment
All serum samples were assessed using the LabMAP technology (Luminex), which combines the principal of sandwich immunoassay with the fluorescent-bead–based technology allowing individual and multiplex analysis of up to 100 different analytes in a single microtiter well as reported previously (17).
Statistical Methods
Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) of prostate cancer risk by 2-fold change of each biomarker (biomarker on log2 scale), as well as for the conventional risk factors PSA (log2 scale), DRE (abnormal versus normal), family history of prostate cancer (positive versus negative), effect of a prior biopsy (ever versus never), race (African American versus not), and the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) risk score (log2 scale; ref. 14). Areas underneath the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUCs) of individual markers, SDs, and tests of the null hypothesis of no diagnostic potential (H0/AUC = 50%) were calculated using U statistics (18). Individual markers were evaluated for independent diagnostic information after adjustment for the PCPT risk score by multivariable logistic regression including the marker and PCPT risk score and similarly adjusting for PSA. In multivariable models where the individual marker retained statistical significance at the 0.05 level after adjusting for PSA or the PCPT risk score, the expected cross-validation predictive capability of the multivariable model was compared with the model containing only PSA or the PCPT risk score using the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). The BIC equals –2 x log likelihood + the number of parameters in the model x logarithm of the sample size, and models with smaller BIC have better expected predictive performance than models with larger BIC. Two-way unsupervised hierarchical clustering of patients and markers was done to assess whether subgroups of patients had similar marker profiles as well as whether subgroups of markers expressed similar expression levels (19). Clustering was done using agglomerative complete linkage after rank transformation using 50 markers that were expressed above the detection limit in 75% or more of participants. Clusters of patients were matched against case/control status to determine whether cancer cases clustered together, and clusters of markers were matched against predefined biological subgroups to determine whether observed statistical correlations among markers corresponded to biologically hypothesized ones. Correlations between pairs of individual markers and tests of whether the correlations were significantly different from 0 (no correlation) were based on the Spearman rank test statistic. All statistical analyses were done in the R freeware statistical package [R 2.2.1 A Language and Environment, Copyright 2005]. For the AUC and univariate logistic regression tests done on each of the 54 biomarkers and six established risk factors, Bonferroni-adjusted two-sided
levels = 0.0008 (0.05/60) were used to account for multiple comparisons. Statistical comparisons of patient characteristics were done using two-sample t tests (age, logarithm of PSA) and by
2 tests (race/ethnicity, family history, DRE, prior biopsy) and were done at the two-sided 0.05 level.
| Results |
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-fetoprotein (AFP) was overexpressed in prostate cancer cases (P < 0.05). However, none of these markers had a significant effect on prostate cancer in terms of the ORs or AUCs adjusted for the high number of multiple comparisons (all P values >0.0008). None of the AUCs exceeded 60%. In contrast, the conventional risk factors PSA and DRE, and the composite PCPT risk score were highly statistically significant (P < 0.0001), and PSA (AUC = 80.4%) and the PCPT risk score (AUC = 84.9%) had AUCs 20% higher than any of the markers. None of the individual markers were statistically significant (all P values >0.05) after adjusting for the PCPT risk score in a multivariable logistic regression, whereas the PCPT risk score retained its statistical significance (P > 0.0001), and the magnitude of its OR for a doubling of risk in each of the adjusted models (all ORs >6.30 per doubling of risk except for one at 5.58 when adjusting for G-CSF). Similar results were obtained when performing multivariable logistic regression of individual markers adjusting for PSA. PSA remained highly statistically significant in each of these models (all P values <0.0001). Only adiponectin was statistically significant (P = 0.04) at the 0.05 level after adjusting for PSA, a marker that had not been statistically significant at the 0.05 level alone. However, the BIC measure of predictive performance for the combined model of adiponectin and PSA (BIC = 112.04) indicated worse predictive performance (higher BIC) than the model containing PSA alone (BIC = 110.94).
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Adipokines
As indicated by the unsupervised clustering, this group of biomarkers did not correlate well with each other. Of all pairs of the seven markers in this group, only correlations between tumor necrosis factor-RI (TNF-RI) and TNF-RII (correlation r = 0.43) and TNFa and VEGF (r = 0.39) were statistically significant (both P < 0.0001). All other correlations were <0.23, and only five other pairs were statistically significant at the 0.05 level. None of these markers showed strong correlation with PSA (median r = –0.03; range, –1.00 to 0.09).
Immune Response
The 12 markers in the immune response group clustered in groups of two or three (Fig. 1), and several pairs exhibited correlations >30% (all P values < 0.0001). IL-1Ra correlated with IL-6 (r = 0.47), IL-2R (0.37), G-CSF (0.52), and macrophage inflammatory protein-1 (MIP-1; 0.47). In addition to IL-1Ra, IL-6 correlated with IL-2R (0.42), G-CSF (0.58), and MIP-1 (0.59). In addition to IL-1Ra and IL-6, IL-2R correlated with MIF (0.42), MPO (0.55), and MIP-1 (0.60). In addition to IL-1Ra and IL6, G-CSF correlated with MIP-1 (0.45) and IP-10 (0.32). Finally, in addition, MIF and MPO correlated (0.36). None of these markers showed strong correlation with PSA (median r = –0.005; range, –0.16 to 0.12).
Metalloproteinases
The five markers in the metalloproteinases group all fell within a larger subcluster (right-hand side of dendogram in Fig. 1), but only two pairs exhibited statistically significant correlation (P < 0.0001): MMP and MMP-1 (0.33) and tPAI 1 and PAI-1 (0.68). All other pairs of markers in this group had correlations <0.14. None of these markers showed strong correlation with PSA (median r = –0.09; range, –0.12 to 0.04).
Adhesion
There were only two adhesion markers, and they clustered together on the heat map (Fig. 1) with correlation 0.39 (P < 0.0001). None of these markers showed strong correlation with PSA (median r = –0.03; range, –0.07 to 0.01).
Hormones and Growth Factors
Although a group of four of the seven markers in the hormones and growth factors group clustered together (Fig. 1), only follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone correlated substantially (r = 0.59, P < 0.0001). None of the correlations for any of the other pairs exceeded 0.18. None of these markers showed strong correlation with PSA (median r, 0.00; range, –0.11 to 0.12).
Tumor Markers
Of the 10 tumor markers, 5 clustered tightly together, and 2 others close to these (Fig. 1). The correlation matrix for this group of markers is shown in Table 3
. Human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) and CA125 correlated with several other markers in the group, and CA15-3 did not correlate with any other markers. None of these markers showed strong correlation with PSA (median r = –0.06; range, –0.19 to 0.01).
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| Discussion |
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Several studies have evaluated different classes of biomarkers individually in prostate cancer (2, 6, 8). The current study is unique in that multiple classes of biomarkers were tested using a uniform, standardized technique, facilitating comparisons among different classes of biomarkers, thus reducing technical or temporal errors. One of the major limitations in accepting new prostate cancer biomarkers is the lack of direct comparison to the conventional risk factors for prostate cancer. Although some studies have compared newly tested biomarkers only to PSA for prostate cancer detection, there have been no head-to-head comparison between new biomarkers and a panel of conventional risk factors, which, besides PSA, include other variables such as DRE, family history of prostate cancer, prior negative prostate biopsy, age, and race/ethnicity. The PCPT risk calculator, which incorporates the above risk factors, was originally developed from subjects in the PCPT and has since been validated in the SABOR cohort, which forms the cohort for the current study (23). When compared with the PCPT risk calculator as well as PSA, all biomarkers found to be marginally significant on univariate analysis underperformed. The findings of this study suggest that future endeavors in the discovery of new biomarkers for prostate cancer should involve a rigorous comparison to the well-known conventional risk factors for cancer detection. The finding that none of the individual biomarkers within the same family or group significantly clustered with each other between cases and controls reinforces the fact that the conventional risk factors continue to be the most accurate way of predicting risk of prostate cancer today.
Received 4/ 4/07; revised 6/ 2/07; accepted 7/11/07.
| References |
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(HIF-1
) and angiogenesis markers in hyperplastic and malignant prostate tissue. Anticancer Res 2006;26:2989–93.This article has been cited by other articles:
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G. Sardana, B. Dowell, and E. P. Diamandis Emerging Biomarkers for the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Prostate Cancer Clin. Chem., December 1, 2008; 54(12): 1951 - 1960. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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G. Castellano, G. Malaponte, M. C. Mazzarino, M. Figini, F. Marchese, P. Gangemi, S. Travali, F. Stivala, S. Canevari, and M. Libra Activation of the Osteopontin/Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 Pathway Correlates with Prostate Cancer Progression Clin. Cancer Res., November 15, 2008; 14(22): 7470 - 7480. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev., November 1, 2007; 16(11): 2519 - 2519. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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