Association of STAT3, PTPRT, TNK2-AS1, LINC-ROR Genes Expression Level with Prostate Cancer and Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia

Prostate cancer (PCa) and benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) are highly prevalent heterogeneous disorders among men. Since angiogenesis is the key step in cancer progression, the deregulation of genes involved in this process may play a role in cancer development.

We evaluated the expression level of 4 angiogenesis-related genes including signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type T (PTPRT), TNK2 antisense RNA 1 (TNK2-AS1), and long intergenic nonprotein coding rna-regulator of reprogramming (LINC-ROR) in patients with PCa and BPH.

The expression level of STAT3, PTPRT, TNK2-AS1, and LINC-ROR genes in tumoral and adjacent non-cancerous tissue (ANCT) samples of 50 PCa patients and tissue samples from 50 BPH patients were evaluated, using the real-time PCR method. The statistical analysis was performed to evaluate the association between genes expression and clinicopathological characteristics of patients with PCa.

The expression level of STAT3 and LINC-ROR was upregulated in tumoral tissues compared to ANCTs (P < 0.0001 for both). Only the expression level of STAT3 in PCa was higher than in BPH tissues (P = 0.001). The elevated expression of STAT3 was associated with the higher grade group of the tumor (P = 0.03). Also, the high expression level of PTPRT and LINC-ROR genes was associated with a higher stage of cancer in patients with PCa (P = 0.002, P = 0.0001 respectively). The STAT3 gene transcript level had an excellent diagnostic power for discrimination between tumoral tissue and the ANCTs with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.93.

The higher expression of STAT3 and LINC-ROR suggested a role in the pathogenesis of PCa in higher stages. Also, STAT3 expression level could be suggested as a potential biomarker for PCa in combination with PSA level.